ABSTRACT

Yet just a decade prior to Taguchi’s criticism of the German school, the situation of economic education in Japan appeared to be quite the opposite of his assessment. In fact, Noburu Kanai, a professor of Tokyo Imperial University and a strong authority within the Japanese social policy school, had in 1891 deplored the prevalence of British economic thought in Japanese academic circles. According to Kanai, quite a few Japanese economic scholars still worshipped the old schools of J.S.Mill, Henry Fawcett and Henry Dunning Macleod as if their principles were golden rules. Even some scholars who advocated German political economy were satisfied with their dependence on the English translations of Wilhelm Roscher’s writings. But the old school had been uprooted in Germany half a century before, and a wide range of pioneering social studies had been making remarkable progress there. Even in conservative Britain, contended Kanai, the old school was undoubtedly at a low ebb. Kanai thus concluded that British liberal political economy was behind the times and that its admirers were like country girls who boasted hairstyles that were in vogue a few years ago in Tokyo but long since out of fashion there now.