2019 Volume 101 Pages 142-155
In this paper, I analyze the workings of economics in Yokomitsu Riichi's novel Shin-en. By focusing on Kaji, who loses his fortune when corporate stocks crash, and Kō, a graduate student in economics, I show that the expressions and motifs of used in the text are closely connected to “Ludwig Pohle's Theory of Economic Depression,” an academic paper by the economist Shuzuta Hitoshi, which Yokomitsu consulted while writing the novel. Furthermore, by bringing in Shizuta's paper, which analyzes the theoretical collapse of Pohle's economic thought, I suggest that Shin-en also works as a critique of other Japanese writers during the early 1930s, many of whom tried to produce literature by applying economic theory to the actual economic situation at the time.
