Prehistory

The Tokugawa Shogunate government deliberately isolated the Japanese nation from Western culture from around 1639 to 1854. A Christian monotheism which presupposed the equality of human beings before one God was thought dangerous to official political doctrine, that of the Chu sect of Confucianism, which understood the structure of society through an analogy with that of the family – that is to say, in terms of domination and subordination. This hierarchical ethic hinders Japanese understanding of Western moral philosophy, including that of Adam Smith, which is founded upon mutuality. Even after opening up to the West the Japanese were taught in government-issued textbooks about the evils and dangers of individualism.

During the isolationist period, Dutch merchants were allowed to trade with the Japanese people resident in Nagasaki and its vicinity since the traders were more interested in profit than religion. Some branches of Western sciences were imported through them and called ‘Dutch Studies.’ However, both the Shogunate government and the feudal lords were interested exclusively in medicine and military sciences, not in social sciences. Adam Smith might have been known by name by any Japanese readers of the following Dutch books: Nederlandsch Handelsmagazijn of Algemeen Zamenvattend Woord en bock voor Handel en Nijverheid (A General Dictionary of Commerce and Industry), 1843, and E. W. De Rooy's Geschiedenis der Staathuishoudkunde in Europa van Vroegste Tijden tot Heden (A History of the Ideas of State Householding in Europe from the Earliest Times to Today), 1851. A.Sandelin's Répértoire Générale d'Economie Politique Ancienne et Moderne, 1846, was also imported, but the readership was much more limited than that of Dutch books. The case must be the same with Max Stirner's German translation of the Wealth of Nations (Untersuchungen über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums, 1846) which was brought to Japan by P. F. J. von Siebold when he made his second visit to Nagasaki in 1859.