Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- General Introduction
- Early Editions of Adam Smith's Books in Britain and Ireland, 1759–1804
- Adam Smith in English: From Playfair to Cannan
- The Glasgow Edition of the Collected Works of Adam Smith
- The Diffusion of the Work of Adam Smith in the French Language: An Outline History
- The German Reception of Adam Smith
- Adam Smith in Russian Translation
- The Reception of Adam Smith's Works in Poland from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries
- Adam Smith in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking World
- Translations of Adam Smith's Works in Japan
- Adam Smith in China
- Notes to the Bibliographies
- Main Bibliography: All Editions, Chronologically Ordered
- Bibliography by Individual Work
- Bibliography by Language Group
- Note on Dutch Editions
- Note on Italian Editions
- Note on Romanian Editions
- Index
Translations of Adam Smith's Works in Japan
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- General Introduction
- Early Editions of Adam Smith's Books in Britain and Ireland, 1759–1804
- Adam Smith in English: From Playfair to Cannan
- The Glasgow Edition of the Collected Works of Adam Smith
- The Diffusion of the Work of Adam Smith in the French Language: An Outline History
- The German Reception of Adam Smith
- Adam Smith in Russian Translation
- The Reception of Adam Smith's Works in Poland from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries
- Adam Smith in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking World
- Translations of Adam Smith's Works in Japan
- Adam Smith in China
- Notes to the Bibliographies
- Main Bibliography: All Editions, Chronologically Ordered
- Bibliography by Individual Work
- Bibliography by Language Group
- Note on Dutch Editions
- Note on Italian Editions
- Note on Romanian Editions
- Index
Summary
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.
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- Information
- A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith , pp. 198 - 208Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014