Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on Naniwada Haruo’s 5-volume-work "The State and the Economy" (1938-1942). It explores how he created his narrative of Japan's economic development as a triumphal story supported by the selfless contribution of rural Japan and the “ethical community” of the Japanese Volk.

Paper long abstract:

The state mobilization of the national economy and public intellectuals became increasingly pronounced in interwar Japan, which led to heated debates about the relationship of capitalism, the Kokutai (national body), and the economic responsibilities of enterprises and individuals among Japan’s professional economists. Naniwada Haruo, who was an Associate Professor of the Imperial University of Tokyo at the time, rose against the many chauvinistic advocates for the “Imperial Economics” (Kōkoku Keizaigaku). Combining Werner Sombart’s idealistic economics and Watsuji Tetsurō’s doctrines on the natural condition-determined national disposition, he introduced the scientific and systematic conception of a “new economic science” that predicted Japan’s “overcoming” of modern capitalism. This presentation focuses on Naniwada’s widely circulating 5-volume-masterwork "The State and the Economy," published between 1938 and 1942; it explores the ways in which Naniwada created his narrative of the modern Japanese economic development as a triumphal story, largely supported by the selfless contribution of rural Japan and the “ethical community” of the Japanese Volk. Naniwada believed that the triple structure of the Japanese Volk—the genetic and spiritual unity of Ie, the local community, and the Kokutai—fundamentally and eternally determined the way Japanese people lived, produced, and exchanged, which gave birth to a peculiar “Japanese economy.” Furthermore, he demonstrated that Japan’s characteristic climatic and spiritual conditions shaped the interpersonal relations within the rural ethical communities. This specific Japanese Volksgeist laid the foundation for the construction of the country’s “post-capitalist” political economy. This presentation analyzes Naniwada’s arguments in light of his contemporary institutional and intellectual context to understand how the state power, the remodeling of the economic system, and the ideological mobilization of intellectuals were interwoven in wartime Japan.