Transfiguring Smithian Liberalism: The Intellectual Legacy of Hiroshi Mizuta and Hideo Tanaka in Japan

Historians have noted how Adam Smith’s name has been invoked to justify liberal economic policies in diverse national contexts. The historical elasticity and political implications of Smithian economic liberalism become clearer by examining the case of Japan. The previous studies of the reception of Smith in Japan have not sufficiently explored its liberal implications after the postwar period. Attention to these implications is essential for understanding not only the popularity of Smith studies in Japan but also the rapid growth of research on the Scottish Enlightenment from the 1970s onward, a period when the field remained comparatively small outside Britain. These two distinctive features of Japanese scholarship are closely connected, yet their relationship has not been systematically analyzed. This paper argues that this connection becomes clearer when examined through the intellectual trajectories of Hiroshi Mizuta and Hideo Tanaka, two influential scholars on the studies of Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment.