Miura Baien, a Japanese Confucianist who in the era of Tokugawa rule most closely approached Western philosophy, was born in Ōita prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. After the usual training in Chinese classics, Miura went to Nagasaki and learned astronomy, physics, medicine, and economics and developed a great admiration for Western experimental methods. This explains in part his rationalism in opposition to the general reliance on the authority of the classics. He devoted his life to scholarship, refusing several offers to serve feudal lords. To help the poor he organized a relief society based on communal principles. Miura's encyclopedic knowledge also included economics. In Kagen (The origin of price) he discussed currency like his contemporary Adam Smith. Miura wrote "if bad money finds wide circulation, good money will go into hiding," a statement similar, in words at least, to Gresham's law.

Miura's...