outline of the history of japanese economic thought.by honjo eijiro

Outline of the History of Japanese Economic Thought. by Honjo EijiroReview by: Ardath W. BurksThe Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Aug., 1950), pp. 394-397Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2049306 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

Nihon keizai shis5-shi gaisetsu Ej>J >(Outline of the history of Japanese economic thought). By HONJ6 EIJIR6 * $r;Jft. Tokyo: Yfihi- kaku, 1946 (Showa 21). 10, 280 p. 36.00 yen.

Both economic histories of Japan and histories of Japanese economics are vital to an understanding of contemporary Japanese economic problems. Like all peoples, the Japanese turned first to the former task of description and only recently to the latter task of introspection. As a result, there are excellent economic histories of Japan, written by Japanese and Westerners alike. On the other hand, a general introductory survey of Japanese economic thought has not been available, so far as this reviewer knows, in either Japanese or Western languages. It is quite appropriate that this outline, essentially of recent Jap- anese economic thought, appears under the authorship of the distinguished Japanese economic historian, Professor Honj6 Eijirb, for he is undoubtedly the Japanese economist best known to the West.

In 1929, professors and students at Kyoto Imperial University organized the Keizai-shi Kenkyft-kai (Society for the Study of Economic History); in the same year the society began publication of a monthly journal. By 1932, the society was established as a permanent research institute. Its driving force was Professor Honj6. Many of his writings were translated into English and published in the Japanese economic journal well known to Western readers, the Kyoto Univer- sity economic review, which began publication in English in July 1926. Issued semiannually until 1939 and quarterly until the war, the Review presented digest-translations of contemporary Japanese economic writings chosen from the monthly Keizai ronso6 :$, an organ of the Kyoto Economic Society.

Professor Honj6 too applied his talents first to a study of the social and economic history of Japan. Partly based on his standard survey, Nihon shakai keizai-shi [*wTr* (Tokyo: Kaiz6-sha, 1928), and partly on a collection of articles published in the Review, this work, entitled The social and economic history of Japan (Kyoto: Institute for Research in Economic History of Japan, 1935), has become a standard reference work in Western-language bibliography. But only here and there, especially in part 2 dealing with the Tokugawa period, did the author treat of Japanese economic thought. A supplement dealt with the development of the study of economic history in Japan.

In 1937, Professor Honj6 published Kinsei no keizai shiso a& 1k of 0 .gs; (Japanese economic thought in modern times) (Tokyo: Nihon hy6ron-sha, 1937). In the following year a second volume with the same title appeared. This was a collection of essays on specific economists and their thought, including Arai Hakuseki, ogyu Sorai, Honda Rimei, and Adam Smith and his effect on Japan. Appended to these studies was a list of prominent Japanese economists, their birth and death dates, and their principal works.

394



BOOK REVIEWS 395

In 1940, the author published a volume with the same title as the present outline: Nihon keizai shiso-shi gaisetsu (Outline of the history of Japanese economic thought) (Tokyo: Yfihi-kaku, 1940). According to the preface, this study was published "for use in lectures on the history of Japanese economic thought in the Faculty of Economics, Kyoto Imperial University." It covered only the Edo period. The intention was to add another volume for the Meiji period and after. However, the author decided to revise the Tokugawa section, to add the later section, and to publish the whole as the present single-volume outline.

Meanwhile, during the war the shorter outline was translated into English and incorporated as part 1 in Economic theory and history of Japan in the Tokugawa period (Tokyo: Maruzen Co., Ltd., 1943). Part 2 consisted of a collection, methodically arranged, of articles previously published in the Kyoto University economic review. These included such familiar essays as "The views of various han on the opening of the country," "Leon Roches and administrative reform in the closing days of the Tokugawa regime," and "Japan's overseas trade in the closing days of the Tokugawa regime." Supplements dealt with the formation of modern Japanese political economy and with the study of economic history subsequent to the Meiji Restoration. At this time, Honj6 Eijira was President of the Osaka University of Commerce.

The first six chapters of the present outline cover essentially the same ground as the shorter survey of 1940 (in Japanese) and the first part -of the 1943 study (in English). The general tendency of Japanese economic thought, in Tokugawa and present times, is indicated by the term for economics itself. The Japanese have adopted an older, obscure Chinese compound, ching-chi hsiieh a W *, which is used synonymously with "political economy." Literally, the term im- plies administration, government (ching-shih f -R) and livelihood (chi-min t4A). Similarly, Japanese economic thought treats of the institutional, not merely the economic man. Tokugawa economic thought never attempted to separate applied economics from economic theory, a separation characteristic in the development of Western social science. Thus in Tokugawa Japan there were various theories calculated to consolidate the system of centralized feudalism, and views inimical to Tokugawa feudalism (chap. 3). Dominant thought was greatly influenced by Chinese ideas; its ruling principle was to fix ex- penditures according to income; and it was physiocratic in nature.

The most remarkable achievement of Tokugawa economic theory was its unfolding of independent, advanced theories of currency and prices. Western readers have been made aware of this accomplishment through the valuable translation-summaries of Neil Skene Smith, An introduction to some Japanese economic writings of the 18th century (London: P. S. King F< Son, Ltd., 1935). Professor Honjb offers a new and valuable analysis of the crude quantity theory of money (Arai Hakuseki), the criticism of policy based on this theory (Ogyu Sorai), the Japanese Gresham's Law (AIliura Baien), and views on the use of paper money (Dazai Shundai). Parallel with the Tokugawa economists' attempt to grasp the significance of strange monetary phenomena, which at least sym- bolized the decay of feudalism, were opposing views as to the roles of chonin



396 THE FAR EASTERN QUARTERLY

(townspeople) and rural classes, the relief of the samurai, and the importance of commerce (chaps. 4, 5).

Economic thought in the closing years of the Tokugawa period was influenced by Dutch learning, and by the rise of a chonin economic ideology called shingaku , a school of thought founded by Ishida Baigan. Thinking was directed toward the growing economic crisis internally, aggravated by the need for decision in terms of foreign intercourse externally (chaps. 4, 6). It is to be hoped that an eventual English translation of this recent outline by Professor Honj6 will include his survey of the various han, incorporated in the 1943 translation but omitted in the 1946 Japanese edition.

The last half of Professor Honjo's outline is devoted to economic thought immediately following the Restoration, throughout the Meiji and Taisha periods, and later (chaps. 7,8,9,10,1 1). The setting for post-Restoration economic thought was, of course, colored by the rapid intrusion of Western writings. Owing to the traditional Japanese view of economics and also because of the status of economics in the West at the time, the first and most influential works to arrive dealt with political economy: Montesquieu, De 'esprit des lois; Rousseau, Du contrat social; and Bluntschli, Allgemeine staatsrecht. Only later did early texts on economics make their appearance: Ellis, Outlines of social economy; Bastiat, Sophismes 6conomiques; works by Coosa, Ingram; and per- haps most important, List, Das nationals system der politischen oekonomie. Almost immediately there appeared schools of thought: progressive versus con- servative, nationalistic versus socialistic, laissez-faire versus protectionist (in terms of foreign trade).

The chief gap in Professor Honj6's survey of this very important early Meiji period, so far as the American reader is concerned, is the neglect of Dr. Dwight Woolsey Learned (1848-1943). Not because he was American but because he was one of the earliest teachers of economics in Japan, Dr. Learned deserves more than the mere mention given him in the appendix. Though he thought of himself as a teacher of the Bible, he became a subject of controversy among Japanese economists as to whether or not he was the first man in Japan to lecture on socialism.

The last two chapters of the outline cover the later development of socialistic and nationalistic theories, differences of opinion concerning economic policies, and the growth of Japanese economics as a discipline. The appendix offers useful lists of Edo period economists and Meiji period translations of West- ern texts.

The scope of Professor Honj6's valuable outline covers only recent Japanese economic thought, from the Edo period to date. It is to be hoped that additional studies will probe into the earlier origins of Japanese social thinking, partic- ularly the background provided by imported Chinese philosophy. The Western reader, trying to estimate the nature, trend, and continuity of Japanese economic thought, is apt to encounter even in modern Japanese economic writings the names of Confucius, Mencius, Sang Hung-yang, and Chu Hsi, as well as the



BOOK REVIEWS 397

more familiar names of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, and Lord J. M. Keynes.

ARDATH W. BURKS Rutgers Univerity

Shih-li yfi-yao ) t Ad. BY HSIUNG SHIH-LI g+tJ. Shanghai: The Commercial Press under the auspices of the China Philosophical Society, 1947. 4 vols. In the February 1950 issue of the Quarterly I gave an account of Hsiung Shih-

li's four-volume work in philosophical idealism which he named the New wei- shih treatise (Hsin wei-shih lun). The four volumes here under review contain subsidiary materials on Mr. Hsiung's thought, though they are not a part of the main treatise itself. Specifically, they are made up of four kinds of documents: (1) Mr. Hsiung's correspondence with friends, students, colleagues, and inquirers; (2) accounts of his conversations, mostly with students; (3) his own lecture notes, addresses etc.; and (4) a diary written by one of his students recording his master's sayings. The whole constitutes an extensive miscellany as large as the original treatise itself.

Additional biographical information in volume 3 (Chinese paging 62-64) leads me to modify my statement in the previous review that Mr. Hsiung "took no part in the revolution against the Manchus and turned his energies to philosophical reflection instead." I find that in his youth he did associate with some friends who had revolutionary tendencies, and that at one time he enlisted in the Manchu army with the purpose of working secretly among the soldiers for the revolutionary cause. This experience was of short duration, however, and it was his natural philosophical interest that became dominant when he was thirty-five years of age and continued so from that time onward.

The publication of these volumes was not without vicissitudes. The mass of correspondence which appears in volume 1 was collected in Peking and published first in 1925. Before the fall of Peking (1936-37) there was a second accumulation which Mr. Hsiung, on being evacuated to P'i-shan in Szechwan, took with him in unpublished form. There students who listened to his lectures took notes and recorded his answers to questions. All this, together with the material brought from Peking, was edited into what was intended to be volumes 2-4. Unfortunately, in the summer of 1939 the whole was destroyed by enemy bombings at Chia-chou whither Mr. Hsiung had gone with his unpublished manuscripts. Barely escaping death himself, Mr. Hsiung returned to P'i-shan. But conditions worsened. Inquirers after learning fell off, as did also his correspondence. In 1946 Mr. Hsiung went to Hankow where, on being invited again to lecture, he went back over his old unedited papers, made another selec- tion of notes and correspondence, and had these compiled into what are the present volumes 2 and 3. Then, finding that another student had kept a diary of his sayings, he included this along with other notes of his own to make up the present volume 4 of his Yii-yao.

Because of the miscellaneous character of most of the Shih-li yfi-yao it cannot



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