Day of Departure from America

Abstract

By 1969, the year that Harvard University was embroiled in the student movement, I realized it had been five years since I had left Japan. Not having returned to Japan during that time, the period of high economic growth rate experienced in Japan was entirely missing from my own experience. I received an offer to become an assistant professor at the newly founded Institute of Economic Research at Kyoto University. The late Director Hideo Aoyama and the late Professor Tsunehiko Watabe were engaged in founding a research institute with an excellent research environment. I hadn’t yet made up my mind whether to return to Japan, but I thought I could spend one year there and return to Harvard before making a final decision. So I accepted this kind offer.