Blackwell Reference Online

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Yasuma Takata was a prominent neoclassical economist in the pre-war era. He was also a tanka poet and published several collections of original poems. He was born in Kurume, a city inNorthern Kyushu, Japan, and graduated in sociology from Kyoto Imperial University. He taught at various universities, including Kyoto, Kyushu, and Osaka, mainly as an economics professor. He wrote more than 100 books, of which about half were on economics and about 30 were sociological. Although his work was multidimensional he began his career as a sociologist and retained this focus throughout his academic life. His sociological works bridged various sociological fields, such as general theory, class theory, social change, population, social power, and others. He was principally a theoretical sociologist The basics of his theory are principally addressed in his early (and voluminous) Shakaigaku Genri (Treatise on Sociology) (1919), in which he endeavored to construct a general sociological theory based on methodological individualism (using the term coined by economist J. A. Schumpeter in 1908, with whom Takata became acquainted sometime later when Schumpeter visited Japan). A pivotal concept in the Treatise was the individual’ s “desire” as the main factor underlying various social phenomena and social evolution. He assumed that several kinds of desires are naturally given to people and determine ... log in or subscribe to read full text