Civil Society and Social Science in Yoshihiko Uchida

This book introduces the work of Yoshihiko Uchida (1913–1989), one of the most prominent Japanese thinkers on the topic of civil society in the post-World War II era. The distinctive features of Uchida’s approach to civil society are his view of the metabolic relationship between human beings and nature and his call for a social science rooted in the experiences and inquiries of ordinary citizens. This original approach did not develop in a straight line from Uchida’s early work to his mature period, and this book follows the twists and turns in its formation through his reflections on the relationships between “the civil” and “the capitalistic,” “the modern” and “the pre-modern,” “the historical” and “the trans-historical,” and “science by specialists” and “inquiry by laypeople.” As a historian of economic thought, Uchida pursued these topical themes by examining figures such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Hajime Kawakami, a prominent thinker in Japan. By casting a light on these inquiries, this book offers the first depiction of Uchida’s body of work as a whole and in doing so illuminates the emergence of original democratic thought in post-war Japan. Preface Intention and Narrative of the Book Construction of the Book “Civil Society” in the Japanese Connotation Explanatory Note Contents 1 Introduction to Yoshihiko Uchida 1.1 The Question of “living” 1.1.1 Living 1.1.2 Betting 1.1.3 Communicating 1.1.4 Living Again 1.2 Major Works by Yoshihiko Uchida 1.2.1 The Birth of Economic Science 1.2.2 The World of Capital 1.2.3 Intellectual Portrait of Japanese Capitalism 1.2.4 Steps of Social Awareness 1.2.5 Rambling Toward Academic Inquiry 1.2.6 Social Science as a Popular Work 1.2.7 Reading and Social Science 1.3 Short Biography of Yoshihiko Uchida References 2 The Origin and Development of Uchida’s Social Science 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Debate Over Japanese Capitalism and the Kōza School Theory 2.2.1 The Kōza School Versus the Rōnō School 2.2.2 Structure and Criticism of Yamada’s Theory 2.3 Civil Society Thought in Wartime 2.3.1 Ōtsuka Historiography 2.3.2 Taketani’s Technology Theory 2.3.3 Ōkōchi’s Theory of Social Policy 2.4 The Prototype of Uchida’s Theory of Civil Society 2.5 Civil Society Theory and After 2.5.1 Civil Society Theory in the Birth of Economic Science 2.5.2 Civil Society as an Abstract Concept 2.6 Discourse on Academic Inquiry as a Theory of Civil Society Formation 2.6.1 Inquiry as Subjective Application 2.6.2 Inquiry as a Path from Below 2.6.3 Inquiry as a Link Between the Individual and the Universal 2.7 Conclusion References 3 Civil Society and the Metabolic Relationship Between Human Beings and Nature 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Marx’s Theory of Metabolism 3.2.1 Humans and Nature in Early-Middle Marx 3.2.2 Labor as a Mediator of Metabolism 3.2.3 Disturbance and Reconstruction of Metabolism 3.3 Yoshihiko Uchida’s Perspective on Metabolism 3.3.1 Productive Forces Perspective in Early Uchida 3.3.2 Social Metabolic Process 3.3.3 Existence and Extinction of Metabolic Viewpoint in Hajime Kawakami 3.4 Reconstruction of Metabolism and Civil Society 3.4.1 Yoshihiko Uchida’s Perception of Civil Society 3.4.2 Civil Society as a Rational Management System for Metabolism 3.5 Conclusion References 4 Science and Inquiry in Hajime Kawakami 4.1 Problems with the Conventional Image of Kawakami 4.2 Kawakami the Bourgeois Rationalist 4.3 A Division of Labor Perspective on History 4.4 Economy and Ethics 4.5 Tragic Marxism 4.6 Conclusion: Kawakami the Literary Man References 5 Invisible Hand and Manipulative Hand 5.1 Introduction: Homo Economicus and Self-interest 5.2 Self-interest and Sympathy in Adam Smith 5.3 Equation of Self-interests and Justice 5.4 Markets and Morality 5.5 Inseparability of Incentives and Moral 5.6 Civilizing Effect of Incomplete Contract 5.7 Conclusion References 6 In Closing: How to Live in a Society Organized Around the Division of Labor 6.1 The Division of Labor as the Basis of Uchida’s Social Science 6.2 Harmful Effects of the Division of Labor 6.3 How Can the Division of Labor Enrich Human Society? References