Susumu Nishibe | |
|---|---|
西部 邁 | |
| Born | (1939-03-15)March 15, 1939 |
| Died | January 21, 2018(2018-01-21) (aged 78) Ōta, Tokyo,Tokyo, Japan |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Sapporo Minami High School |
| Alma mater | University of Tokyo (Bachelor, Master) |
| Influences | Edmund Burke,Joseph Schumpeter,Yukichi Fukuzawa,José Ortega y Gasset,Tsuneari Fukuda |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Socioeconomics,Political philosophy,Mass society Studies |
| School or tradition | Neoconservative[1] |
| Influenced | Shinzo Abe,Shoji Nishida,Keishi Saeki,Satoshi Fujii,Takeshi Nakano,Teruhisa Se,Kenji Sato,Keita Shibayama |
Susumu Nishibe (西部 邁; 15 March 1939 – 21 January 2018) was a Japanese critic, conservative and economist. He was a professor ofSocioeconomics atUniversity of Tokyo. He criticizedmodern economics,progressivism, andrationalism, and advocated theories onmass society,conservatism, and the independence of Japan from the United States.
Susumu Nishibe was born on 15 March 1939 inOshamambe, Hokkaido. His father was a son of aBuddhist monk inNaganuma, Hokkaido.
After graduating fromSapporo Minami High, he attended theUniversity of Tokyo in 1958, where he practiced far left student activism as a member of theCommunist League (共産主義者同盟, abbreviated as "Bunto" from a German word "bund") and also participated in theAnpo Protests (安保闘争), however he broke with the left in 1961.
Then he majored in theoretical economics underMotō Kaji (かじ もとお、嘉治 元郎) and got a Doctor of Economics from the University of Tokyo. It was at the suggestion ofMasahiko Aoki that he went to the graduate school.
After that, he was successively an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics,Yokohama National University and the College of Arts and Science, of theUniversity of Tokyo.
In 1975, he published his first book, "Socio-Economics" (ソシオ・エコノミックス,Soshio Ekonomikkusu), in which he criticized modern economics by introducing the methodology of sociology and other disciplines. After that, he moved to theUnited States to study at theUC Berkeley and then atCambridge. In 1979, his experience note "Into the mirage" (蜃気楼の中へ,Shinkirou no nakae) was published. After returning to Japan, he began to criticizeadvanced mass society andAmericanism, and defend Western conservative thoughts as a conservative critic since the 1980s. In 1986, he was appointed a professor of Socio-Economics at the College of Arts and Science ofUniversity of Tokyo. He also taught as a visiting professor atThe Open University of Japan.
Nishibe died of suicide on 21 January 2018.[2] It was suspected that the suicide wasassisted.[3]
