Masaharu Tanaka, Preface: Introduction to Liberal Economic Thought

Abstract

Introduction by Hideo Tanaka The late professor Masaharu Tanaka （1925-2000）, president of JSHET from 1985-86, edited The Comparative Study of Liberal Economic Thought, a book published in 1997 by The University of Nagoya Press. He wrote a long preface to it, and this English article is a translation of that essay. During his two years as a junior researcher under Michio Morishima at Kyoto University, Tanaka began his studies with Max Weberʼs Wissenschafts-lehre before moving on to the study of 18th century French social thought and later Marx, Lenin and Prehanov. His Doctoral Dissertation was on the History of Russian Economic Thought, including the Narodniks, Marxists, and other movements. He became a professor of economic theory after its publication in 1967. With the decline of socialism, the focus of the economics academy in Ja-pan gradually shifted from Marxist political economy to Anglo-American eco-nomics. 　　Tanaka and his study group （his former students and other scholars） start-ed the “society for the study of methodology of social sciences” in 1980, and continued to hold monthly meetings until his death. As mentor of this society, Tanaka read various books concerning liberalism and other topics. He found Hayekʼs work important, and translated several of his essays in collaboration with his student Hideo Tanaka, publishing them as Market, Knowledge, and Liberty in 1986, a book that became a forerunner of the “Hayek boom” in Japan.