Originally desiring a career as a historical novelist, at the university Morishima pursued social science, studying both economics and sociology under Yasuma Takada.

He started Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) of Osaka University with Yasuma Takada.

Later, he started the project that led to the establishment of the Suntory-Toyota Foundation and the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economic and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at LSE.

[2] Morishima's three-volume work reinterpreting and synthesizing economic ideas in the major writings of David Ricardo, Karl Marx, and Léon Walras, now largely forgotten, represents one of the high points of the radical political economy of the 1970s New Left in North America.

His intense interest in general equilibrium theory, classical political economy, and capitalism drove this work.