ABSTRACT
Introduction Japan is the country where the name of Adam Smith (1723-1790) (Adamu Sumisu) has been widely known amongst the public for the past 150 years or so (see Mizuta, 2003). A complete Japanese translation of the Wealth of Nations (1776) (Fukokuron) was published for the first time in 1882-1888 by Eisaku Ishikawa (1858-1887), who was a student of Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835-1901), one of the greatest intellectuals of modern Japan. Since then, more than 20 Japanese translations of the Wealth of Nations (WN) have been published, and Smith has become one of the most familiar Western thinkers known in the country (see Okochi, 2000). Fukuzawa’s most scholarly work, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1875), made three references to Smith, first as the man who ‘expounded’ an economic theory, second as a great compatriot of James Watt (1736-1819) and third as the man who ‘first formulated the laws of economics’ (Fukuzawa, 2008: 14, 107, 117). Even his most own popular work, An Encouragement of Learning (1872-1876) mentioned the name in an important passage to discuss the vital role of the ‘middle class’ as the engine of modern civilization. In Western history, ‘not one form of business or industry was creation of the government alone. Their foundations were always laid by the plans of scholars in the middle class’. Together with Watt and Stevenson, Smith was mentioned as the man who ‘explained the principles of economics and completely changed the methods of business’. This was the ‘power of intellect’ of the ‘middle class’ who were ‘neither government administrators nor the laboring masses’ (Fukuzawa, 2012: 41). Fukuzawa recollects an interesting episode in his classic The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa (1898). When requested by a ‘certain high official’ in the Treasury Bureau of the Tokugawa Shogunate to lecture on a recent English book on political economy, Fukuzawa translated the original word ‘competition’ into ‘kyoso’ (literally ‘race-fight’). Not finding any better Japanese expression, he actually invented the word. The official disliked it because the word contained ‘so’ which meant ‘fight’. Fukuzawa resisted by saying that that is ‘nothing new’ – and ‘exactly what all Japanese merchants are doing’. He explained that
if one merchant begins to sell things cheap, his neighbor will try to sell them even cheaper. Or if one merchant improves his merchandise to attract more buyers, another will try to take the trade from him by offering goods of still better quality. Thus, all merchants race and fight and this is the way money values are fixed.
