ABSTRACT
Introduction In any country, the production and dissemination of Economic Ideas is a teleological practice. Economists may pretend to work in a world of pure theory but we do not comprehend the social actualities of Economic Work – until we know the ends it is aiming for. This aspect of teleological practice is especially visible in Japan (see the chapter by Yagi on Japan earlier in this volume). Western-influenced Economic thinking began in Japan with the realization of a dangerous developmental gap between Japan and the advanced Western countries. The sense of threat was paired with an awareness of the enormous potential gains offered by Western-style techniques and institutional arrangements. From the beginning of Japan’s modern era, thinkers in Economics were thus concerned to direct their own national historical development and to speed it up. This teleological practice has gone together with a close attention to questions of historical stages and transitions, institutions and structures, all understood as immediate practical problems. Liberal Economics thinking, as it came to Japan in the late 1860s and 1870s, was apprehended in this developmental sense. The liberal social and political vision was taken in as an ideal by Japanese reformers but liberal political economy was understood also as a powerful statecraft technology, which Japan could either emulate or be subject to as a victim. In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, Marxism was apprehended in a similar ‘dual’ sense, first as a social critique and vision for social transformation but then also as a technique of power. This ‘catch-up, over-take’ aspect became significant especially after the inauguration of the First Five Year Plan in the USSR. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, the theoretical system put together by Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) fitted easily into this developmental context. This chapter surveys some moments of the reception of Schumpeter’s ideas in Japan, taking his developmental schema as a point of reference and as an object for constructive criticism. For historians, Schumpeter’s dynamic and dramatic vision of Economic Development has the advantage of helping bring into a single focus the whole span of Japan’s modern history.
