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“I am a Marxist,” announced the professor to his students one Friday afternoon, “but I’m not going to force my ideals on you”. The professor then proceeded to talk about the progression of the study of Economic History in Japanese academia. He said that the first major movement was the Marxist movement that really took off directly after Japan came out of World War 2. He said that the idea probably caught on because it may have seemed like the most optimistic available school of thought being discussed at the time and so Japanese academics were attracted to it. Marxists began to become less vocal in Japan academia and were nearly completely muted by the time the 80s and 90s arrived. The physical collapse of the Berlin Wall that represented the symbolic collapse of the USSR delivered a big blow to Marxism in Japanese academia. He then started to say that there was a healthy rivalry between the economists at the University of Tokyo, University of Kyoto and Hitotsubashi University and each was influenced by a different school of thought: some followed trends in Germany, some followed trends in France and some followed trends in the United States. In the past few years, there have been some major influences that have also begun to cause visible changes in the way Economic History is studied.

“Fair enough,” thought the students to themselves. It began to rain heavily outside. Those who had not carried any umbrellas with them to class began to feel uncomfortable: they knew that they would have to walk out into the rain once class was over shortly.

The professor was not done yet with his lecture.

“What I am trying to tell you is that I know what my stance is, and I want each of you to find your own. Those of you going into academics are going to need to find their own paths. Just don’t be Anarchists; we can’t have rebellious Anarchists running amok on campus,” stated the professor.

Just then the bell rang as one of the quieter students wrote in his notebook in bold letters, “why can’t I be an Anarchist?“. But he also felt happy that the professor addressed the students as fellow venturers in the labyrinths of academia. He then stuffed his notebook into his bag and ran out into the rain wondering whether anyone else had written the same question in their own notebook.