Kuruma Samezō
Kuruma Samezō (久留間鮫造), September 24, 1893 (Meiji 26)-October 20, 1982 (Showa 57) was a Japanese economist. He was professor emeritus at Hōsei University where he ran the Ōhara Institute for Social Research, and was best known as the compiler of a Lexicon of Marxist Political Economy. He is the father of Rikkyō University professor emeritus . Personal Summary. Born to a paper-seller in Okayama-city, Okayama-prefecture, as the eldest son he was expected to take over the family business, and after reading Wealth of Nations he developed an early interest in economics. After attending Okayama Prefectural Middle  School and High School number 6, he enrolled in the economics department of Tokyo Imperial University Law School, but after one month he transferred to political science. He graduated after a gap year due to illness, but attended no seminars. In 1918 he began working for Sumitomo Bank, believing he would be conducting research. The Rice riots of 1918, along with disillusionment with his work, caused him to move towards a socialist perspective and leave his job after only three months. After a stint in his parents’ home, the following February he entered the university's Ōhara Institute for Social  Research. Beginning in 1920, he and were dispatched to Europe for two years to gather books and other materials, Kuruma in England and Kuchida in Germany, the results of which proved invaluable to the research institute. From 1923 he lectured for three years on the history of economics at Doshisha University, yet did not take part in the . The Ōhara Institute relocated from Osaka to Tokyo in 1936, and Kuruma moved to the capital to continue his research there. The increasing climate of repression did not prevent him from continuing to study Marx, and took an interest in forecasting the  postwar economic situation using Marx's ideas on money and inflation. He maintained a system of note cards containing important passages of Marx's writings, which later helped him compile the "Lexikon." The air raids of May 1945 destroyed the Ōhara Institute for Social Research along with all the materials stored there. After the war, along with Institute Chief Takano Iwasaburō, Kuruma occupied himself with rebuilding, until in 1946 upon the recommendation of he agreed to move the Ōhara Institute to Hōsei University, becoming a professor of political economy, finally receiving his doctorate in 1960. At Hōsei he participated in  monthly readings of Marx which included Kōzō Uno, with whom he formed something of a theoretical rivalry. In 1964 he retired as a professor emeritus. In his later years he assembled researchers of marxian economics from Hōsei and Rikkyō Universities to compile an encyclopedic “Lexicon of Marxian Economics,” published in a bilingual German-Japanese edition as Marx-Lexikon zur Politischen-Ökonomie. He saw the first three volumes published before dying of lung cancer in 1982. Among his other teaching positions he served as a professor at Aichi University and as a part-time lecturer on the history of political economy  at Tokyo University, Hokkaido University, Gakushūin University, and others.