Tadao Yanaihara

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Tadao Yanaihara (1893 – 1961) was a Japanese economist and educator.

Born in Ehime prefecture, Yanaihara became a Christian under the influence of Uchimura Kanzo's Mukyokai or Nonchurch Movement, while he was studying at the University of Tokyo. In the 1930s he was appointed to the chair of colonial studies at the University of Tokyo, formerly held by his teacher Inazo Nitobe. However, Yanaihara's pacifist views and emphasis on indigenous self-determination, which he partly inherited from Nitobe – a Quaker and founding member of the League of Nations – came into a full conflict with Japan's wartime government during the World War II. As a result, Yanaihara was forced to resign from teaching under the pressure by right-wing scholars in 1937. Yanaihara resumed his teaching after the war and taught international economics at the University of Tokyo. He served as the president of the University from 1951 to 1957. Yanaihara's writings are collected in Yanaihara Tadao Zenshu(Complete Works of Tadao Yanaihara), 29 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1963-65).

For critical studies of Yanaihara's legacy, see Yanaihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy: Redeeming Empire, by Susan C. Townsend (Richmond: Curzon, 2000); and The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945, edited by Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1984).