On August 25, Professor Emeritus Yuichi Shionoya passed away at the age of 83 from lung cancer. Born in Nagoya in 1932 as the son of Professor Tsukumo Shionoya, who was famous as the translator of J. M. Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, he learned modern economics and became an associate professor in 1964 and then professor in 1972 at Hitotsubashi University. He became the dean of the Faculty of Economics in 1985 and then the president of the university from 1989 to 1992. Serving as the head of the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research after his retirement from Hitotsubashi University, he continued his academic activity and was designated Bunkakorosha (a person of cultural merit) by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2002. His academic activities, which concerned not only Japan but also European countries, resulted in his becoming president of the International Schumpeter Association from 1990–1992 and an honorary member of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought in 2007.

To review Professor Shionoya’s multiple academic achievements, he began by studying the macroeconomics derived from Keynes as well as the welfare economics derived from A. C. Pigou. He became, however, very skeptical of the utilitarian basis of welfare economics and changed his study to economic philosophy in the 1970s under the strong influence of the theory of justice advanced by John Rawls. The Structure of Ideas of Value—Right versus Utility published in 1984 was his first masterpiece, and Economy and Morality: The Philosophy of the Welfare State published in Japanese in 2002 and in English in 2005 was his second masterpiece in this field.

Quite apart from his engagement with the work of Rawls, he dealt with J.A. Schumpeter as a great thinker on economy and society. He not only translated Theorie der ökonomischen Entwicklung into Japanese but also published his own interpretation in Schumpeter and the Idea of Social Science: A Metatheoretical Study, which was published in Japanese in 1995 and in English in 1997. In this work, he stressed that Schumpeter intended to create synthetic social science based on economics. It was indeed as a result of this view that he expressed his approval of Evolutionary Economics, accepted as a director of the Japanese Association for Evolutionary Economics (JAFEE), and made an inspiring speech on this topic in the Autumn Conference 2005 at the University of Hokkaido.

Moreover, being stimulated by Schumpeter’s critical review of the controversy between G. Schmoller and C. Menger, he began to reconsider the legacy of G. Schmoller, as well as the German Historical School of Economics. The German Historical School: The Historical and Ethical Approach to Economics published by Routledge in 2001, which he edited and which consists of contributions by Japanese scholars, and his other masterpiece, The Soul of the German Historical School: Methodological Essays on Schmoller, Weber and Schumpeter published by Springer in 2005, are notable results of this reconsideration.

He retained his intellectual interest until his death. His final two major books, Principles of Economic Philosophy: The Hermeneutical Approach in 2009 and The Economic Philosophy of Romanticism: Arts, Ethics and History in 2012, were also tours de force. To our great regret, it is unknown what he would have written next. Therefore, it is the task of any scholar who is unsatisfied with the current narrow understanding of economics to consider Professor Shionoya’s legacy and multiple achievements and endeavor to develop them in the future.

Naoshi Yamawaki

Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Dean, Seisa University, Kanagawa, Japan