ABSTRACT
In what follows, I attempt to reinstate Uchida’s work not only because of its special role in Japanese intellectual history, but, more importantly, because of its academic quality, which is outstanding, even by international standards. Uchida’s final answer to his central question of ‘Why did Smith become the father of modern economic science?’ still deserves a serious reappraisal from various viewpoints. Particularly relevant in this context is to ask how Uchida managed to start his outstanding study of Smith during the years of Japan’s militaristic oppression in the 1940s and how he accomplished it as a single monograph in the early 1950s, in the midst of the Korean War and the related intense national debate over the direction that should be taken in Japan’s post-war democratic reconstruction.
