Shigeto Tsuru (都留 重人) was a Japanese economist. He was widely honored for his scholarship, including the Presidency of the International Economic Association.

Early life

He was born in 1912, in Nagoya, Japan to Iyo Shida and Nobuo Tsuru, an industrial Engineer. He also had 3 sisters, Keiko, Sumiko and Hisako. While being a student at the Eighth Higer School (now part of Nagoya University), he became politically involved in 1929–30, as a student leader in the "Anti-Imperialist Leagues", activities against the Japanese military then in the early stages of aggression towards China. He was imprisoned for several months. Expelled from the higher school and found himself unable to gain admission to imperial universities, he went to the US for tertiary education. He first matriculated at Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin, then transferred to Harvard University, where he also completed a master's degree later. He earned his PhD from the same institution in 1940. He later served as chancellor of Hitotsubashi University.