Unlike their Western counterparts, many Japanese economists seem to have a mistaken notion that theories are everything in economics. Rather than disregard them, Japanese almost seem unaware of the philosophies that underlie theories. Western economists make policy proposals based on economics only after deciding whether to support a certain school of economics, be it neoclassical or Keynesian, and its underlying philosophies.

Capitalism today has changed completely from what it was in the second half of the 19th century, when Karl Marx wrote "Das Kapital." In today's Japan, intense class struggles between capital and labor, typified by the labor strife at the Mitsui-Miike colliery in 1959-60, are unheard of. Labor unions have moderated their demands and stage few strikes. Student movements have weakened practically to the point of nonexistence, even at the university where I teach. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, socialist society is no longer considered the necessary step to utopia.

Nevertheless, ideological confrontations between neoclassical and Keynesian economists -- or conservatives and liberals -- continue unabated in the academic and political communities. Conservatives dominate in both, although most ordinary people are little aware of the differences.