Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T15:56:24.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The economics of social reform across borders: Fukuda's welfare economic studies in international perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Tamotsu Nishizawa
Tamotsu Nishizawa*
Affiliation:
Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8603, Japan E-mail: nisizawa@ier.hit-u.ac.jp
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines how, in the course of modernization, Japan learned from Germany and Britain about ideas and institutions concerning social reform, and attempted to implement and develop them at home. It focuses on Fukuda Tokuzo, a pioneering liberal economist and social reformer, who studied under the German historical economist Lujo Brentano, and who was also inspired by the British scholars Alfred Marshall, A. C. Pigou, and J. A. Hobson. By examining how Fukuda's ideas and work were developed and assimilated in Japan, this article shows how Japanese social reformers navigated the two key strands of economic thinking that witnessed a process of globalization during this period: neoclassical welfare economics, on the one hand, and an ethical-historical style of economics, on the other. It shows how the latter was stronger in a latecomer country to modernization such as Japan.

Keywords

BritainGermanyJapansocial reformtransfer of ideas
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 232 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am deeply grateful to Martin Daunton and Julia Moses for their very useful and valuable comments. I also wish to convey my sincere thanks to the editors of the Journal of Global History and anonymous readers for their very helpful critiques of my article and their sage advice.

References

1 Schumpeter, Joseph A., History of economic analysis, London: Allen & Unwin, 1954, p. 753Google Scholar.

2 Hicks, J. R.scope, ‘The and economics’, status of welfare, Oxford Economic Papers, 27, 3, 1975Google Scholar, in Collected essays on economic theory, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 218. See, e.g.,

Hutchison, T. W., On revolutions and progress in economic knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978Google Scholar, chs. 3 and 4.

3 See Grimmer-Solem, Erik, The rise of historical economics and social reform in Germany 1864–1894, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

Koot, G. M., English historical economics, 1870–1926, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987Google Scholar.

4 See Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic crossings: social politics in a progressive age, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998Google Scholar.

Kurz, Heinz D., Nishizawa, Tamotsu, and Tribe, Keith, eds., The dissemination of economic ideas, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See below pp. 244–5 and n. 50.

6 Rutherford, M., ‘Institutionalism and its English connections’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 14, 2, 2007, pp. 291–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Backhouse, Roger E., ‘J. A. Hobson as a welfare economist’, in Roger E. Backhouse and Tamotsu Nishizawa, eds., No wealth but life: welfare economics and the welfare state in Britain, 1880–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 114–135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Gao, Bai, Economic ideology and Japanese industrial policy: developmentalism from 1931 to 1965, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, A history of Japanese economic thought, London: Routledge, 1989Google Scholar;

Shiro, Sugihara and Toshihiro, Tanaka, eds., Economic thought and modernization in Japan, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998Google Scholar;

Tamotsu, Nishizawa and Aiko, Ikeo, ‘Japan, economics in’, in Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume, eds., The new Palgrave dictionary of economics, 2nd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, vol. 4, pp. 603–612Google Scholar.

8 This was the first translation of a Western economic book in Japan, being based on the Dutch translation of William Ellis's Outlines of social economy (1846). See Tamotsu, Nishizawa, ‘The emergence of the economic science in Japan and the evolution of textbooks 1860s–1930s’, in Massimo Augello and Marco Guidi, eds., The economic reader: textbooks, manuals and the dissemination of economic sciences during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 305–323Google Scholar.

9 Chuhei, Sugiyama and Hiroshi, Mizuta, eds., Enlightenment and beyond: political economy comes to Japan, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1988Google Scholar. For the economic history of this period, see

Konosuke, Odaka and Yuzo, Yamamoto, eds., Bakumatsu, Meiji no nihonkeizai (The Japanese economy of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods), Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 1988Google Scholar.

10 Jiro, Kumagai, ‘Enlightenment and economic thought in Meiji Japan: Yukichi Fukuzawa and Ukichi Taguchi’, in Sugihara and Tanaka, Economic thought, pp. 23–43Google Scholar.

11 Shiro, Sugihara, Seio keizaigaku to kindai Nihon (Western economics and modern Japan), Tokyo: Miraisha, 1972Google Scholar. For the influence of List's ideas in latecomer countries, see

Metzler, Mark, ‘The cosmopolitanism of national economics: Friedrich List in a Japanese mirror’, in A. G. Hopkins, ed., Global history: interactions between the universal and the local, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 98–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Kokka gakkai zasshi, vol. 2, no. 13, 1888.

13 Morris-Suzuki, History, pp. 63–64Google Scholar.

14 Etsuji, Sumiya, Nihon keizaigakushi no hitokoma (An aspect of Japanese history of economic thought), Tokyo: Ohatashoten, 1934Google Scholar, ch. 5.

15 Hyoe, Ouchi, Keizaigaku gojunen (Fifty years of economics), Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1970Google Scholar, vol. 1, ch. 2.

16 For a detailed account of the adoption of German Sozialpolitik in Japan, see Pyle, Kenneth B., ‘Advantages of followership: German economics and Japanese bureaucrats, 1890–1925’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 1, 1, 1974, pp. 127–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also

Takashi, Fujii, ‘The Japanese social policy school: its formation and breakup’, in Sugihara and Tanaka, Economic thought, pp. 44–59Google Scholar.

17 Shakai Seisaku Gakkai shiryo, bekkan (Japanese Association for Social Policy, historical documents), supplementary volume, Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobo, 1978. For a longer-term perspective, see Garon, Sheldon, The state and labour in modern Japan, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987Google Scholar. For the economic history of this period, see

Takafusa, Nakamura, Meiji, Taisho-ki no keizai (The economy of the Meiji and Taisho periods), Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1981Google Scholar.

18 Yuichi, Shionoya, ‘Schmoller and modern economic sociology’, Schmoller Jahrbuch, 126, 2, 2006, p. 179Google Scholar. See also Grimmer-Solem, Rise of historical economics.

19 Ashley, W. J., Surveys, historic and economic, New York: A. M. Kelley, 1966 (reprint), p. 430Google Scholar. Ashley himself was later called a ‘socialist of the chair’: see B. Semmel, ‘Sir William Ashley as “socialist of the chair”’, Economica, n.s., 24, 96, 1957, pp. 343–53.

20 Hamilton, Walton H., ‘The institutional approach to economic theory’, American Economic Review, 9, 1, suppl., March 1919, p. 318Google Scholar. See also

Hamilton, Walton H., ‘Economic theory and “social reform”’, Journal of Political Economy, 23, 1915, pp. 562–584CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 See Backhouse and Nishizawa, No wealth but life.

22 Rutherford, ‘Institutionalism’; Rodgers, Atlantic crossings.

23 Boulding, Kenneth, ‘A new look at institutionalism’, American Economic Review, 47, 2, 1957, p. 3Google Scholar.

24 Brentano, Lujo and Fukuda, Tokuzo, Rodo keizai-ron (Labour economics), Tokyo: Dobunkan, 1899Google Scholar, reprinted in Fukuda Tokuzo, Keizaigaku zenshu (Collected works on economics), 6 vols. Tokyo: Dobunkan, 1925–6, vol. 5, part 2.

25 Tokuzo, Fukuda, Kosei keizai kenkyu (Welfare economic studies), Tokyo: Tokoshoin, 1930, p. 2Google Scholar.

26 Tokuzo, Fukuda, ‘Preface’, in Collected works, vol. 5, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

27 Fukuda, Tokuzo, Die gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in Japan, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1900Google Scholar, published as one of the Münchener volkswirtshaftsliche Studien, edited by Lujo Brentano and Walter Lotz.

28 Lujo Brentano, Über das Verhältnis von Arbeitslohn und Arbeitszeit zur Arbeitsleistung, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1876; 2nd edition 1893.

29 See Letters from Tokuzo Fukuda to Lujo Brentano 1898–1931, transcribed and translated by Yanagisawa Nodoka and revised by Nishizawa Tamotsu, Centre for Historical Social Science Literature, Hitotsubashi University, Study Series, 56, 2006; Tamotsu, Nishizawa, Marshall to rekishigakuha no keizaishiso (The economic thought of Marshall and the historical school), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2007Google Scholar, ch. 4, s. 3;

Fukuda, ‘Preface’, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

30 Henry Sidgwick, Principles of political economy, London: Macmillan & Co., 1883, book 3, ch. 9, on ‘private morality’; Marshall, Alfred, Principles of economics, 9th edition, ed. C. W. Guillebaud, vol. 1, London: Macmillan, 1961Google Scholar, book 1, ch. 1.

31 Tokuzo, Fukuda, ‘Shugakuryoko hokokusho (Report of the final year study trip)’, Tokyo Higher Commercial School, 1894, pp. 68–69Google Scholar.

32 Fukuda's manuscripts are held in the Hitotsubashi University Library. See Nishizawa, Marshall, pp. 521–522Google Scholar.

33 Seki's manuscripts ‘Notes on readings’ are held in the Seki Archives (Osaka City Central Library). See Nishizawa, Marshall, pp. 522–523Google Scholar.

34 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 5, pp. 2304–2308Google Scholar, 2313–15.

35 Sheehan, James J., The career of Lujo Brentano: a study of liberalism and social reform in imperial Germany, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966, pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

36 See Goldman, Lawrence, ‘Civil society in nineteenth-century Britain and Germany: J. M. Ludlow, Lujo Brentano, and the labour question’, in Jose Harris, ed., Civil society in British history: ideas, identities, institutions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 97–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Hutchinson, T. W., On revolutions and progress in economic knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 94–95Google Scholar.

38 In 1873 Marshall gave lectures to women on ‘Some economic questions directly connected with the welfare of labour’. See Raffaelli, Tiziano, Biagini, Eugenio, and Tullberg, Rita M., eds., Alfred Marshall's lectures to women: some economic questions directly connected to the welfare of labour, Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995Google Scholar. His initial inquiry resulted in ‘The future of the English working classes’, a paper read at the Cambridge Reform Club in 1873, and reprinted in

Pigou, A. C., ed., Memorials of Alfred Marshall, London: Macmillan, 1925Google Scholar.

39 Marshall, Alfred, ‘The future of the English working classes’, in Pigou, Memorials, p. 102Google Scholar.

40 Raffaelli, Biagini, and Tullberg, Alfred Marshall's lectures, pp. 27–31Google Scholar;

Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: a study in the relationship between classes in Victorian society, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, p. 7Google Scholar.

41 Collini, S., Winch, D., and Burrow, J., That noble science of politics: a study in nineteenth-century intellectual history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Brentano, quoted in Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 5, p. 2360.

43 Ibid., vol. 5, pp. 2359–60, 2466.

44 Fukuda used the fourth edition of Marshall's Principles. Thus the structure of Book I of his Lectures is as follows: ch. 1 ‘Introduction’, chs. 2 and 3 ‘The growth of free industry and enterprise’, ch. 4 ‘The growth of economic science’, ch. 5 ‘The scope of economics’, ch. 6 ‘Economics as science’. Book V is something called ‘Circulation’ (in fact, exchange and distribution); it is not Marshall's Book V ‘Theory of the equilibrium of demand and supply’ or ‘General relations of demand, supply and value’, which is the core of the economic analysis. Fukuda thought historical narrative more important and did not recognize the significance of the static core of Marshall's Book V.

45 After a period studying abroad, Otsuka returned to Japan and completed the first full Japanese translation of the eighth edition of the Principles in 1925–26. It was not until the mid to late 1920s that the general equilibrium theory was understood in Japan, first by Nakayama Ichiro and Takada Yasuma in the 1920s, and later by Yasui Takuma in the 1930s.

46 Marshall, Principles, pp. 1–4Google Scholar.

Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 1, pp. 1–6Google Scholar.

47 Edgeworth, F. Y., ‘Review: Principles of economics by Alfred Marshall’, in Peter Groenewegen, ed., Alfred Marshall: critical responses, London: Routledge, 1998, vol. 2, p. 12Google Scholar.

48 Keynes, J. M., ‘Alfred Marshall, 1842–1924’, in his Collected writings, vol. 10, London: Macmillan, 1972, p. 170Google Scholar.

49 Marshall to James Ward, 23 September 1900, in Whitaker, John K., ed., The correspondence of Alfred Marshall, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, vol. 2, p. 285Google Scholar.

50 For this aspect of Marshall, see Katia Caldari and Tamotsu Nishizawa, ‘Progress beyond growth: some insights from Marshall's final book’ and ‘Marshall's “welfare” and “welfare economics”: a reappraisal based on his unpublished manuscript on progress’, both forthcoming.

51 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 5, p. 265Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., 275.

53 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 24–5. Fukuda's interpretation of Marshall is complex, just as Marshall himself was complex. Keynes wrote of his ‘double nature’, i.e., while Marshall was a member of ‘the tribe of sages and priests’, he was very much a scientist too (Keynes, ‘Alfred Marshall’, p. 173). See also Fetter's interpretation below.

54 This article was first included in Fukada's Shakai seisaku to kaikyu toso (Social policy and class struggle), 1922, and later in his Collected works, vol. 5.

55 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 5, pp. 27Google Scholar, 122–6.

56 Yuzo, Yamada, ‘Fukuda keizaigaku to fukushi kokkaron (The economics of Fukuda and the welfare state)’, Nihon Gakushiin kiyo (Bulletin of the Japanese Academy), 37, 3 (1981–82), pp. 181–184Google Scholar.

57 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 4, p. 1051Google Scholar, and vol. 6, pp. 1934–5.

58 In this context Fukuda referred to Robert Liefmann, ‘Theorie des Volkswohlstands’ (unpublished); S. N. Patten, The theory of prosperity, New York: Macmillan, 1902Google Scholar; and

Mitscherlich, W., Der wirtschaftliche Fortschritt, Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld, 1910Google Scholar.

59 This is from Marshall's manuscripts on ‘Progress’: University of Cambridge, Marshall Library, Marshall papers, folder 5.6.

60 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 5, pp. 275–276Google Scholar.

61 Fetter, Frank A.economics’, ‘Price economics versus welfare, American Economic Review, 10, 3–4, 1920, pp. 472Google Scholar, 476–9.

62 Ibid., pp. 721–3.

63 Fukuda, Welfare economic studies, pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

64 Journal of Political Economy, 23, 1915, pp. 562–84.

65 Hobson, J. A., Work and wealth: a human valuation, London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1992Google Scholar (first published 1914), p. 9. Following Ruskin, Hobson defined ‘the essential work of the political economist’ as being ‘to determine what are in reality useful or life-giving things, and by what degrees and kind of labour they are attainable and distributable’ (ibid., p. 10).

66 Liu, William Tien-Chen, A study of Hobson's welfare economics, Beijing: Kwang Yuen Press, 1934Google Scholar.

67 See Roger E. Backhouse, ‘Scientific welfare economics: the origins of Bergson–Samuelson welfare economics, 1936–1947’, unpublished paper presented at Hitotsubashi University, 18–19 March 2013; Nishizawa Tamotsu, ‘Kousei-keizaigaku no genryu: Marshall, Ruskin, Fukuda Tokuzo (Origins of welfare economics: Marshall, Ruskin, Fukuda Tokuzo’, Keizai kenkyu (Economic review), forthcoming.

68 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 5, pp. 280–281Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., pp. 292–3.

70 See Fukuda, Welfare economic studies, chs. 1 and 2, ‘Justice in circulation (justitia commutative) by Aristotle’ and ‘Production, exchange, and distribution of surplus’.

71 See Allett, John, New liberalism: the political economy of J. A. Hobson, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially ch. 3, ‘Society as a maker of values’.

72 Fukuda, Welfare economic studies, pp. 178–179Google Scholar.

73 See Hobson, J. A., The industrial system: an inquiry into earned and unearned income, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909Google Scholar, reprinted New York: A. M. Kelley, 1969, esp. ch. 19, ‘The human interpretation of industry’.

74 Ibid., pp. 312, 327–31.

75 Fukuda, Welfare economic studies, p. 183Google Scholar.

76 Shigeto, Tsuru, Kagakuteki hyumanizumu wo motomete (The pursuit of scientific humanism), Tokyo: Shin-nihon Shuppansha, 1998, pp. 96–97Google Scholar, 150.

77 Fukuda, Collected works, vol. 6, pp. 1376–1377Google Scholar.

78 See Nishizawa, Tamotsu, ‘Ichiro Nakayama and the stabilization of industrial relations in postwar Japan’, Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, 43, 1, 2002, pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

79 Tsuru Shigeto, ‘“Kokumin shotoku” gainen heno hansei (Reflections on the “national income” concept)’, Hitotsubashi ronso (Hitotsubashi review), 12, 6, 1943Google Scholar; Tsuru Shigeto, ‘In place of GNP’, originally presented at the ‘Symposium on political economy of environment’, Paris, 5–8 July 1971, reprinted in

Tsuru, S., Towards a new political economy, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1976CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Ichiro, Nakayama, Wagamichi keizaigaku (My way to economics), Tokyo: Kodansha, 1979, p. 12Google Scholar;

Ichiro, Nakayama, ‘Kosei keizaigaku to Fukuda Tokuzo (Welfare economics and Fukuda Tokuzo)’, in Minoguchi Takeo and Hayasaka Tadashi, eds., Kindai keizaigaku to Nihon (Modern economics and Japan), Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 1978, pp. 78–81Google Scholar.

81 Chuo Rodo Iinkai (Central Labour Commission), ed., Nakayama Ichiro sensei to Rodo Iinkai (Professor Nakayama Ichiro and the Labour Commission), 1981, p. 5.

82 From the autumn of 1957, Nakayama wrote a series of articles entitled ‘Industrial relations from now on’ for the Asahi newspaper; in 1958 he wrote New managers, new workers, and also published The labour management consultation system as one of the Productivity Library series. See Nishizawa, ‘Ichiro Nakayama’, p. 10Google Scholar.

83 Nakayame Ichiro, The collected works of Nakayama Ichiro, vol. 14, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1972, pp. 32–4.

84 Ikeda's article appeared in the Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Japanese Economic Newspaper), 9 March 1959.

85 I organized a conference with the help of Roger Backhouse and others on the ‘History of welfare economics reconsidered: from Ruskin to Sen’ in March 2013 at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. We shall continue this joint project, which is supported by the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science.