ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to clarify the cause-and-effect relationship between economic development and economics by investigating the interplay between policies and economic development in each period. It describes the rise of free trade and protectionism after the Meiji Restoration, from the end of the nineteenth century. The economic situation of Japan during that period is also mentioned. The chapter traces the formation, development, and demise of the Society for the Study of Social Policy, examining the economic situation of Japan from the end of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. It deals with the fascination with Marxism in the 1920s because of the economic hardships Japan faced after the First World War. The chapter briefly examines the introduction and development of the general equilibrium theory in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s and of Keynesian economics at the end of the 1930s.
