The City as Subject: Seki Hajime and the Reinvention of Modern Osaka Volume 13 - Hardcoverby Jeffrey E. Hanes (Author) In exploring the career of Seki Hajime (1873 1935), who served as mayor of Japan's second largest city, Osaka, Jeffrey E. Hanes traces the roots of social progressivism in prewar Japan. Seki, trained as a political economist in the late 1890s, when Japan was focused single mindedly on "increasing industrial production," distinguished himself early on as a people centered, rather than a state centered, national economist.