This book introduces the work of Yoshihiko Uchida (1913–1989), one of the most prominent Japanese thinkers on the topic of civil society in the post-World War II era. The distinctive features of Uchida approach to civil society are his view of the metabolic relationship between human beings and nature and his call for a social science rooted in the experiences and inquiries of ordinary citizens. This original approach did not develop in a straight line from Uchida early work to his mature period, and this book follows the twists and turns in its formation through his reflections on the relationships between “the civil� and “the capitalistic,� “the modern� and “the pre-modern,� “the historical� and “the trans-historical,� and “science by specialists� and “inquiry by laypeople.� As a historian of economic thought, Uchida pursued these topical themes by examining figures such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Hajime Kawakami, a prominent thinker in Japan. By casting a light on these inquiries, this book offers the first depiction of Uchida body of work as a whole and in doing so illuminates the emergence of original democratic thought in post-war Japan.