ABSTRACT
In retrospect, Sontoku Ninomiya (1787–1856) had the concept of bundo, which meant the attainment of feasible general equilibrium with fiscal balance and positive savings in a state or early modern domain. Yet it is hard to translate bundo into the English accord with British classical political economy. Although we notice the similarity between the concept of bundo in Ninomiya’s teachings and computational general equilibrium in modern economics, the moral aspect of Ninomiya’s teachings, hotoku thought (returning virtue by virtue, or repayment of blessing), was gradually emphasized in textbooks of morality for elementary students around 1900. Nonetheless, we can regard Ninomiya as an important forerunner of modern economics in the nineteenth century and the books written by his followers Tomita (1883) and Fukuzumi (1893) as important Japanese economic classics. We will discuss Tameyuki Amano’s macroeconomics and Ninomiya’s teachings in Chapter 8.
