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The economics of social reform across borders: Fukuda's welfare economic studies in international perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Tamotsu Nishizawa
Tamotsu Nishizawa*
Affiliation:
Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8603, Japan E-mail: nisizawa@ier.hit-u.ac.jp
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Abstract

This article examines how, in the course of modernization, Japan learned from Germany and Britain about ideas and institutions concerning social reform, and attempted to implement and develop them at home. It focuses on Fukuda Tokuzo, a pioneering liberal economist and social reformer, who studied under the German historical economist Lujo Brentano, and who was also inspired by the British scholars Alfred Marshall, A. C. Pigou, and J. A. Hobson. By examining how Fukuda's ideas and work were developed and assimilated in Japan, this article shows how Japanese social reformers navigated the two key strands of economic thinking that witnessed a process of globalization during this period: neoclassical welfare economics, on the one hand, and an ethical-historical style of economics, on the other. It shows how the latter was stronger in a latecomer country to modernization such as Japan.

Keywords

BritainGermanyJapansocial reformtransfer of ideas
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 232 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I am deeply grateful to Martin Daunton and Julia Moses for their very useful and valuable comments. I also wish to convey my sincere thanks to the editors of the Journal of Global History and anonymous readers for their very helpful critiques of my article and their sage advice.

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45 After a period studying abroad, Otsuka returned to Japan and completed the first full Japanese translation of the eighth edition of the Principles in 1925–26. It was not until the mid to late 1920s that the general equilibrium theory was understood in Japan, first by Nakayama Ichiro and Takada Yasuma in the 1920s, and later by Yasui Takuma in the 1930s.

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84 Ikeda's article appeared in the Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Japanese Economic Newspaper), 9 March 1959.

85 I organized a conference with the help of Roger Backhouse and others on the ‘History of welfare economics reconsidered: from Ruskin to Sen’ in March 2013 at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. We shall continue this joint project, which is supported by the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science.