Presidential Address History of Economics Society Annual Meeting, 1983 Western Economics Transplanted to Japan

These remarks are not intended as another antiquarian jaunt through strange names and dates and who-said-what and what-did-he-really-mean. My purpose is to explain and interpret two or three leading aspects of the Japanese response to Western economic thought after some 250 years of Tokugawa Shogunate isolation ended about the middle of the last century, aspects of which have seemed strange to Western observers of Japanese culture, decidedly including myself. The explanation will also try to distinguish the assimilation process of Western economics in Japan from similar processes in other developing countries (LDCs) which have worked out quite differently. The three special features of Western-style economic thought in Japan which have seemed strangest to the Western visitor, again including myself, are these: