At first glance, this book is three books in one: (i) a history of Japanese monetary economics and policy spanning the years 1868 to 1936; (ii) a delineation of the Japanese contribution to ‘neoclassical economics’ understood, on the one hand, to be Marshallian demand and Walrasian general equilibrium theory, and, on the other, econometrics; and (iii) a portraiture with profiles of Amano Tameyuki ^{Footnote 1} and Martin Bronfenbrenner. As such, it is indeed “a history of economic science in Japan,” and one rendering of the Japanese chapter in “the internationalization of economics in the 20th century.”

As regards (i), a history of Japanese monetary economics, the relevant question is how chapters 3 and 9, supplemented by 2, complement Mark Metzler (Reference Metzler2006), a work now widely acknowledged to be

Ikeo’s discussion undergirds the drama of Japan’s return to the gold standard in 1931 by a focus on doctrine: ^{Footnote 3} texts of Fujisawa Rikitaro on Alfred Marshall’s fixed-ratio-mintage proposal; Yamazaki Kakujiro, Kanbe Masao, Takashima Saichiro, all on Irving Fisher’s indices; Fukai Igeo and Hijikata Seibei on Gustav Cassel’s 1926 memo; and Fukuda Tokuzo, Ishibashi Tanzan, and Takagaki Torajiro on John Maynard Keynes. ^{Footnote 4} These texts, all in Japanese, are brought to bear on what Metzler saw as “perhaps the greatest economic policy mistake in Japan’s modern history” (p. xiv), and elaborated as the contrast between Inoue Junnosuke’s deflationary negative policies and the expansionist (sekkyoku seisaku) Keynesian positive policies of Takahashi Korekiyo. Footnote 2 of Chapter 3 draws attention also to the more recent work of Kato Toshihiko (1983) and Shizume Masato (2009). There is much more to be done however, and it is this reviewer’s hope that the author will return to these texts and possibly develop a more comprehensive reading based on the “reflection of international political and economic hierarchies juxtaposing the metropole versus the periphery both globally and within the Japanese empire”; what Janet Hunter (Reference Hunter2007) sees as Metzler’s emphasis. One gripe is that Chapter 9 could be more illuminatingly titled “Keynesian Policy Prior to Keynes” rather than lifting Axel Leijonhufvud’s clichéd title.

As regards (ii), the Japanese contribution to neoclassical economics, it is best to differentiate between Walrasian general equilibrium theory (chapters 4 to 6, also supplemented by 1 and 2) from econometrics (Chapter 7). Ikeo introduces her Chapter 6 on “the existence question” with assertions:

Leaving aside the questionable relevance of the history of abstract algebra, surely there is more to general equilibrium theory than proofs. Its founders—Cassel, John Hicks, Keynes, and Paul Samuelson undoubtedly among them—conceived of their subject as pertaining to the representation of the economy as a whole. Even if one privileges Léon Walras, the connection between him and Antoine Cournot, or between him and Francis Edgeworth, constitute important research programs. More specifically, this reviewer has never fully understood the simple-minded preoccupation with the Arrow–Debreu paper, and extended narratives concerning all those who have been “robbed” of scientific credit as a result of its publication. Lionel McKenzie is one of the staples, and the author now adds Nikaido Hukukane. She writes:

From the point of view of the history of economic analysis, all this is rather dreary reading, especially if the gossip is not transcended by substantive analyses of the specific contributions. However, the tone of the times being what it is, one has to be prepared for more public washing of linen, that of John Nash, David Gale, Hirofumi Uzawa, Tjalling Koopmans, Robert Solow, Harold Kuhn, Walter Isard, and undoubtedly of others.

But Ikeo does make an attempt at substance: an Appendix outlines the proof of Uzawa’s 1962 result; Brouwer’s fixed point theorem, albeit in a special case, is stated; and the Eilenberg–Montgomery and Begle fixed point theorems are discussed. But in this reviewer’s judgment, the attempt does not go far or deep enough. Bracketing yet again the digression of Van der Waerden’s algebra (pp. 126–128), or the red herring concerning Kakutani’s contribution to the cleaning-up of the von Neumann–Morgenstern manuscript (p. 133), or the blemish concerning set-to-set transformations (p. 119), the point is that the proofs of Gale, Hakukane Nikaido, and Gérard Debreu of their lemma are substantively, and insightfully, different. Debreu in 1959, and Nikaido in 1968 and 1970, have both gone into this in their texts. ^{Footnote 6} There is no conspiracy here: this reviewer learned the KKM lemma and the Nikaido mapping at the hands of Herbert Scarf in the fall of 1971; also see Nikaido (Reference Nikaido1954). Ikeo writes, “McKenzie did not refer to John Nash’s papers in game theory, which were very important for other economists in solving the existence question” (p. 136). But neither did Nikaido in his two texts—Nash is Banquo’s ghost at all these banquets. The relation of Nikaido’s papers to those of Nash, not in terms of the vulgarity of citation counts, but in terms of substance, has yet to be worked out.

Chapters 4 and 5 do break new ground, however. In the first, Ikeo frames Fukuda Takuzo’s 1925 edition of the Lectures on Economics as a turning point in the mathematization of economics in Japan, and then follows Martin Bronfenbrenner in calling Takata Yasuma the “Japanese Marshall”—presumably on the basis of his 1929 to 1932 five-volume work New Lectures on Economics. She lists the topics it covers, and notes its distinction of “general equilibrium theory in the manner of Walras from the partial equilibrium theory in the manner of Marshall” (p. 78). Its influence on the Japanese Samuelson (Yasui Takuma), on Sono Masazo, and on a host of figures of lesser importance, is ably traced. “Yasui introduced the Walrasian tâtonnement process in the literature of economic stability for the first time in the world—was the first to introduce the word (p. 106, 109). Yasui delightedly stated in 1990, ‘It is me that introduced Walrasian tâtonnement in the economics literature for the first time’” (p. 106n14). Even though introduced in Chapter 2, Yasui’s work in economic dynamics gets fuller treatement in Chapter 5; also see the author’s references to Roy Weintraub and Tsuru Shigeto.

Indeed, the author’s treatment of Yasui’s work suggests a problematic of some sociological and anthropological importance. Why was Yasui’s work of the forties ignored?

One can couple Morishima with Takashi Negishi in this regard, and observe that it stands on its head the complaint of Russian mathematicians in the sixties and the seventies as to why their work was read but not cited by Western authors. Indeed, this use of the adjective “Japanese” appended, as if by spasmodic reflex, to Western names leads one to ask what it is about our thinking that sounds discordant and odd if we are to refer to Keynes as the English Takahashi or to Robert Aumann as the Israeli Arrow or to Lionel McKenzie as the Rochester Samuelson. Pushing this question of identities and identification, one may ask why Fujisawa Rikitaro or Sono Masazo, constantly identified as mathematicians, do not also merit an economist’s identity. The point is that not unlike Native Americans in Hollywood westerns of the fifties, we do not know as much of the adjectivized noun as the proper noun itself. The author’s strength, and her book’s value, lies in her translations of Japanese texts, and in giving an English voice to those who did not have it. It is the treatment of authors such as Yagi Yoshinosuke and Sugimoto Eiichi that gives Chapter 7 (and Section 3 of Chapter 4) especial interest: the Morishima–Nikaido–Uzawa triumvirate, and the two Michios (Morishima and Hatanaka), already wrote in English.

As regards (iii) on portraiture, the entire book is imbricated with vignettes that go towards embodying what are cardboard/cartoon characters to non-Japanese eyes, and therefore to the general portrayal and embodiment I mentioned above. As Metzler (Reference Metzler2009, p. 165) writes in his review of Smethurst:

Thus, for example, Takahashi, Yasui, and Bronfenbrenner all also figure elsewhere in the book. ^{Footnote 8} But it is really Chapter 8 on Amano Tameyuki, and Chapter 10 on Martin Bronfenbrenner, that I read with absorbed fascination. Ikeo’s identification of the Morishima–Negishi omission of Yasui is not the only problematic worth pursuing: one may also focus on Amano or Bronfenbrenner. Who was Bronfenbrenner primarily working for during the Occupation? What did his employers assign him to do? What was his role in the purge of Ishibashi, in the Shoup (Vickrey) Mission, or in drawing up the Dodge line? ^{Footnote 9}

I began this review by seeing three books in one, but after having worked through its contents, and reflected on its basic thrust, I now see a more unified framing of the subject, see aspects that are perhaps more implicit than explicit. The author attaches importance of history to theory, recognizes that behind every theorem there are personalities and problematics, and, for substantive impact, it must of necessity go beyond its mathematical register to have a say on the policing done by those who have been entrusted with the making of policy. The common objectives of macroeconomics and general equilibrium theory, recognized in Section 4 of Chapter 4, and a discussion of issues of monetary policy before launching into homotopy or Lyapunov theory, is the forging of a methodological road that ought to find important wayfarers and fellow-travelers.

If there is any criticism of this book, it has to be in its exclusions: turnpike theory, the univalence problem, and the two-sector model are surely subjects that are nothing if not Japanese. But then this reviewer had to remind himself that the task of an historian is never finished: there is more to be covered, always more to be included, and to be further uncovered in what is already included. But this book is surely a worthwhile and pioneering beginning as far as the history of Japanese economic science is concerned.