This volume deepens and revises our understanding of early-modern Japan by examining connections between economic thought and policy. It also engages issues of interest to scholars of world history and economic thought outside Japan or East Asia.

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.

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

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.

Japanese scholars of economics present nine contributions addressing the development of economic thought and modernization in Japan, primarily over the last 150 years. The contributions begin with discussion of several currents of economic thought during the Tokugawa period, which represented the intellectual prerequisites of modern economic growth in Japan. Developments in the Meiji era, the interwar period, and economic thought after 1945 are then explored, followed by Marxian and non-Marxian approaches to economic development and the political economy, and an essay on the considerable influence of Adam Smith on Japanese economics during and after WWII. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"Ordinary Economies in Japan directs our attention to a subordinate yet powerful theme in modern Japanese economic thought that appeared unobtrusively in the mid-Tokugawa period and found expression in the formation of voluntary, non-hierarchical associations of commoners who purposively organized their self-help activities apart from state authority. Tetsuo Najita's compelling analysis of kô is groundbreaking and explains a great deal about Japanese modernization that economic historians have overlooked or undervalued."—Stephen Vlastos, University of Iowa