As J. M. Keynes’ famous words suggest—“I do not know which makes a man more conservative—to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.” (Keynes 1931)—history of ideas is a treasure island from which aspiring researchers acquire inspiration and courage for their innovative investigation. However, as a professional researcher that studied in the history of economics for some decades, the responsible editor of this special feature (hereafter Promenade) would add that the sense of historicity is needed to appreciate the value of investigations of past masters and to revive them in contemporary forms. Reflections on the relations between original investigations of past masters and their prevailing receptions are necessary.

2018 was the two-century anniversary year of the birth of Karl Marx. I participated in its international celebration symposium in Tokyo and confirmed my above view. Most of the English papers presented to this symposium were results of the participants’ research as usual. In the Japanese session, the quarrel between speakers on the side of ‘Marx living’ and that of ‘Marx dead’ attracted the audience. I was a bit frustrated.

This symposium was held on December 22–23, 2018, in collaboration with seven academic associations at the Ichigaya Campus of the Hosei University, Tokyo. Ca. 40 English and ca. 20 Japanese papers were submitted, and ca. 400 people in 2 days attended the symposium. To my knowledge, no other conference of international scale was held in Japan in this year. Thus, I should be satisfied that an international symposium under the name of Marx was held in Japan where Marxism has occupied an integral part  of the learnings over one century.

The article on the random matrix solution of the ‘transformation problem’ by Bertram Schefold (2019), which was read at the symposium, was already published in this journal with discussions. My paper on Marx’s concept of capital in this Promenade is the revised version of my conference paper at that symposium. The author of another Marx paper, Uroš Kranjc, was the participant at the 2018 Tokyo symposium as well. I expect some delayed papers related to Marx will appear in this journal in the next volume.

Indeed, we can regard Marx as an evolutionist that admits the cumulative and qualitative change of institutions and human culture if we can eliminate monocausal deterministic traits from his system (Yagi 2020). Beside Marx, evolutionary economists have many past masters from whom they can learn. Since the advent of the twenty-first century, Tetsuo Taka, an established researcher in the history of American evolutionary economics, has moved his research interest to Adam Smith and began to publish his research results (Taka 2012a, b). It was a happy surprise that we know the evolutionist feature of Adam Smith thorough his work. Economics has been evolutionary from its founding father! It is a joy of the editor that EIER could publish his latest research in this direction. Thorstein Veblen is generally considered as one of the ancestors of modern evolutionary economics. His view of man is systematically described by Noriko Ishida in this Promenade. In the preface to his Principles of Economics, Alfred Marshall (1920) regarded economic biology (economic evolution) as Mecca where the pilgrim of economists is destined for. However, in Veblen’s eyes, Marshall’s neo-classical theory remained ‘quasi-evolutionary’(Veblen 1898). The article by Naoki Matsuyama in this Promenade argues that Marshall was not satisfied with the mechanic approach and quested for the new approach to understand the tendency and deviation that might result in evolution.

The promenade in the history of economic thought is ramified and crossed. Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review welcomes stimulating research results from this treasure island of the history of economics and related social ideas.