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This article has the following three objectives. The first is to display the thought and behavior of Japanese thinker Yasuma Takata (1883-1972), almost unknown in the West, who formulated a sociological theory and a socio-economic theory. The second is to examine how his thought and his behavior related to Japan wrong-doing during World War II and the issue of “responsibility/irresponsibility”. The third goal is to show that Takata’s thought actually remains deeply connected with modern Japanese currents of thought, as indicate thinker Masao Maruyama and fiction-writers Kenzaburo Ôe and Yasunari Kawabata. JEL codes: B15, B31, N45