The City as Subject

"In exploring the career of Seki Hajime (1873-1935), who served as mayor of Japan's second-largest city, Osaka, Jeffrey E. Hanes traces the roots of social progressivism in prewar Japan. Seki, trained as a political economist in tbe late 1890s, when Japan was focused single-mindedly on "increasing industrial production," distinguished himself early on as a people-centered, rather than a state-centered, national economist.

After three years of advanced study in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, during which he engaged Marxism and later steeped himself in the exciting new field of social economics, Seki was transformed into a progressive."--BOOK JACKET.