Since the late-19th century, Japan has made remarkable strides in industrialization. Beginning with the economic vision of Miura Baien in the 18th century, and employing a detailed comparison with the West, this book delves into the economic thought of the scholars who played a pivotal role in Japan’s modernization process. The author takes Fukuzawa Yukichi’s theory of ‘civilization’ as the standard measure of Japan’s modernization and compares it with differing visions from various critics whose research focused on rural poverty and social problems, such as Maeda Masana, early socialists, Yanagita Kunio and Kawakami Hajime. Further, the book explores new liberalism (Ishibashi Tanzan, Fukuda Tokuzo) and Marxism (Yamada Moritaro, Uno Kozo) in the 1920s and 1930s. After discussing the dilemmas faced by economists during wartime (Takata Yasuma, Ryu Shintaro, Shibata Kei), the author concludes this intellectual history with the country’s post-1945 democratic reforms and their early demise. This book is valuable reading for students and researchers of Japan’s intellectual history. However, due to the book’s comparative perspective, as well as the universality of the modernization experience, it will also appeal to students and researchers of the history of economic thought and modern intellectual history.

This volume explores early-modern formations of economic thought and policy in a country widely regarded as having followed a unique, non-Western path to capitalism. In discussing such topics as money and the state, freedom and control, national interest ideology, shogunal politics and networks, case studies of the Saga Domain and Ryukyu Kingdom, Confucian banking, early Meiji entrepreneurship, and relationships between macroeconomic fluctuations and policy, the essays here deepen and revise our understanding of early-modern Japan. They also enlarge and refine the analytical vocabulary for describing early-modern economic thought and policy, thereby raising issues of interest to scholars of world history and economic thought outside of Japan or East Asia.

By throwing light on economic thought in the period of the Japanese Enlightenment, this book will make clear what led to the institutionalization of business and economic education, the birth of the pioneer business enterprise and of serious economic journalism and the reasons behind the success of Japanese economic development.

Economics, in the modern sense of the word, was introduced into Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, Japanese thinkers had already developed, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a variety of interesting approaches to issues such as the causes of inflation, the value of trade, and the role of the state in economic activity. Tessa Morris-Suzuki provides the first comprehensive English language survey of the development of economic thought in Japan. She considers how the study of neo-classical and Keynesian economics was given new impetus by Japan's 'economic miracle' while Marxist thought, particularly well established in Japan, was developing along lines that are only now beginning to be recognized by the West. She concludes with an examination of the radical rethinking of fundamental economic theory currently occuring in Japan and outlines some of the exciting new approaches which are emerging from this 'shaking of the foundations.

This ground-breaking book provides the first English-language survey of economic thought in modern Japan. Significantly, it offers both a detailed study of economic thought from 1600 to 1945 and a nuanced analysis of Western and Asian perspectives on the field of Japanese economic history. Expertly translated from Japanese and written by leading scholars in the field, this exciting study includes: * A novel approach to economic thought which contextualizes the core values of thinkers across the period * A comparative analysis of Japanese economic history which looks at the continuities across the Meiji divide * The extensive use of archival sources, many of which were previously unavailable in English A History of Economic Thought in Japan, 1600 - 1945 serves as a case study of how Western economic ideas spread to non-Western regions and interacted with indigenous ideas. It will therefore be of immense value to both scholars of economic thought and those seeking a deeper understanding of the moral, intellectual, and societal forces that shaped modern Japan.

David Ricardo’s theories were introduced in fragments in Japan after the Meiji restoration of 1868 and his work came into prominence late in comparison to other major thinkers figuring in the history of economic thought. The book seeks to analyse the studies in Japan from the year 1920 to the end of the 1930s – during the time before the outbreak of the Second World War, when even the study of classical economics became difficult. The book covers different aspects of his works and contains elements which may be interesting to foreign and even Japanese readers today without necessarily coming under the influence of Marx’s reading. It presents works on Ricardo that are at present, wholly unknown to the Ricardo scholars and more generally to the historians of economic thought outside Japan. This book is an essential read on the history of economic thought in Japan.

Professor Morishima explores different types of societies and economies with a focus on the Japanese economy.

This book examines the diffusion of economic ideas in East Asia, assessing the impact of external ideas on internal theory and practice. It considers economists from Adam Smith onwards, including Marx, Keynes, Hayek and contemporary economists, and covers the subject both historically and also includes present day and likely future developments. The book covers all the major countries of East Asia, and pays particular attention to specific economists who have had a strong impact in specific countries, and to important developments in economic theory in East Asia, exploring how far these have been driven by Western economic ideas. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars of East Asia and South-east Asia, as well as those interested in economics, economic history and management.

This book expertly presents the first systematic research and comparative analysis ever attempted on the rise and early developments of the Economic Associations founded in Europe, the US and Japan during the nineteenth century. Contributors analyze the activities and debates promoted by these associations, evaluating their role in: the disseminati

This highly illuminating book marks a significant stage in our growing understanding of how the development of national traditions of economic thought has been affected by both internal and external factors. The expert contributors set an explicit agenda for the study of the dissemination of economic ideas across four centuries, acknowledging that the history of dissemination is also a history of the flux of economic beliefs, rendering any generalisation difficult, if not impossible. Topics explored include systems of political economy, European and American interactions, the diffusion of economic ideas in South-Eastern Europe and beyond, and the exchange of ideas between Japan and the rest of the world. This book will prove a fascinating and stimulating read for scholars and researchers in the field of economics generally, and more specifically in heterodox economics, the history of economic thought and economic theory.