THE RECEPTION OF ADAM SMITH IN JAPAN: THE FORMATION OF THE IDEA OF SHIMIN SHAKAI, OR CIVIL SOCIETY, BY ZENYA TAKASHIMA BEFORE THE END OF WORLD WAR II

Shinji Nohara

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2022, vol. 44, issue 3, 370-392

Abstract: From the late 1930s to the end of World War II, the Japanese government restricted freedom of expression and research. Nevertheless, Zenya Takashima (1904–1990), one of the most influential social scientists in Japan, continued to publish his writings. On an initial reading, he seems to have supported totalitarianism, even though he did not; moreover, he seemed to have agreed with a model of a controlled economy as a historical step, although he did not see this as inevitable. Rather, in order to resist the totalitarian ideology, he adopted a Smithian view of “Shimin Shakai,” or civil society, in which people, by protecting justice, acted freely in the economy. Before Takashima, the concept of civil society was used to express the German concept “bürgerliche Gesellschaft,” but Takashima changed the meaning of the term to a society of equal citizens.

Date: 2022
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