Academic Achievements of the late Prof. Dr. Moritaro Yamada(<Special Issue>Special Number mourning the late Prof. Dr. Moritaro Yamada's death)

<p>I. When Dr. Yamada took up his researches, the world system of capitalism was in the general crisis after World War I and the Japanese capitalism, which has developed through the war-time, was specifically on the stage of self-criticism. At that time, economic studies in Japan were focused in three great debates about Marxian Economics. Dr. Yamada firstly examined the value theories of several economic schools and demonstrated in 1925 that Marxian value theory had sublated the contradiction within the classical value theories. In 1931 he took part in the controversy on capital accumulation and reproduction. With the criticism of Tugan-Baranowsky and R. Luxemburg, he described the part III in vol II of Das Kapital as "the essence of Marxian Economic Theory" because it solved the most important issue of economic theories, i.e., the macro-analysis of reproduction and circulation of the aggregate social capital. In 1936, just before World War II, he completed his famous work, The Analysis of the Economic Structure in Japanese Capitalism, according to Marx's reproductions-theory. The evaluation of Das Kapital as an macro-dynamic theory and the theoretical and actual researches for Japanese capitalism made him one of the most influential economists in Japan. His theory is now estimated as not only the Marxian economics on the stage of the general crisis of capitalism but also a forerunner in the field of macro-analysis which was later highlightened by Keynes in the criticism of the Say's law in 1936 and by Leontief in The analysis of American Economic Structure, in 1941. II. The core of Dr. Yamada's economic theory is the analysis of reproductionsprocess and - structure of the aggregate social capital. Combining it with his another theory about the evolutional periods in the world capitalism, he aimed to analyse a certain historical-concrete capitalism, especially Japanese one. He insisted that the industrial capital formation in England signified the transition period of economic structure from the feudal hierarchic land-ownership to the industrial capitalism in England herself as well as in the world, and that only such a typical transition gave birth to the classic economic school. In his opinion, as the transition in other countries occured after the industrial revolution in England, i.e., in another evolutional period in the world capitalism, the capitalism in other countries had its own national type, distinguished from the capitalism in England. In the case of Russian Empire, for example, not only the same phasal definition as in England but also the evolutional type with its local features should be examined. Moreover, the industrial capital formation in Asia (China, Japan, etc.) was modified even by their own agrarian order. In this connexion, "which phase of economic structure was discussed in what kind of manner by Quesnay (or Smith), Marx, Lenin, Wittfogel, etc." became very important for him. III. One of his important writings after World War II is resulted from the inquiry about the historical significance of the Postwar Agrarian Reform. This work began with the theoretical definition in his article "The Scheme of Capital Reproduction and Rental Category" in 1947 and with the researches after the big land-owners for the scientific record of this reform process. Besides these activities, he tried three times to evaluate the historical significance of the reform. (1) He pointed out in 1949, that the reform was revolutionary because it destroyed the social basis of the prewar semi-feudalistic land-owner system in Japan, but it had its limits because of the lack in the perspective toward agricaltural revolution. (2) Immediately after the agrarian reform the productivity of agriculture had remarkably increased, but its abnormal stagnation penetrated gradually among the former high productive areas and the differentiation of</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>