Phan Chau Trinh (1872-1926) and Fukuzawa Yukichi (1834-1901) are prominent thinkers who advocated the reform in Vietnam and Japan, respectively, in the context of both the East and the West had lots of changes in terms of historical and social situation in the second half of 19th century and first half of 20th century. In their life, each left many valuable thoughts to the archive of arguments of their respective country. One of the prominent thoughts of theirs is the thought on education. This was expressed in a rich and unique way in many aspects, such as: the role of education, the subject of education, purposes of education, contents of education, methods of education, etc. It can be seen that, although they took different directions to approach and explain issues relating to education and the influence of education on social development of each respective country, their thoughts on education still had interesting similarities. From such, we can draw out historical meanings for the development of each nation today.