From the 1910s, poverty studies were being conducted in Japan among economists, social policy researchers, and Marxist scholars. Under their influence, there were growing calls for social research in sociology, which had previously been overly theoretical. In this context, Teizo Toda was the first to systematically present empirical sociology in Japan. Beginning with historical research on families, he later studied various research methods, including statistics, monographs, and questionnaires, publishing a groundbreaking work titled Social Research in 1933. As a sociologist during the transition period from armchair sociology to empirical, positivist sociology, he was more conscious than later generations about the relationship between general sociology, theoretical sociology, and social research. He clarified the interdependent relationship between social research and sociology. In terms of research, he was fortunate to have access to statistical data from Japan’s first national population census conducted in 1920. In an era without computers, Toda used individual census forms to advance his empirical family research. Furthermore, Toda organized academic activities in Japanese sociology and made significant contributions to its institutionalization. Through his management of the ‘Japan Sociological Society’ and leadership of the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Letters’ Sociology Research Department, he nurtured many talented individuals and researchers. After the war, he also collaborated in public opinion surveys.