This, combined with his own ailing health, forced him to retire in 1971. He was however appointed professor emeritus at the same university in 1974. Though Maruyama suffered from poor health especially in his later life, he continued studying and writing until he died in Tokyo on 15 August 1996. The major work of his retirement years was a three-volume commentary on Fukuzawa Yukichi's principal work "Bunmeiron no Gairyaku", based on a lengthy seminar he conducted with a small working group. This was published in 1986, as "Reading 'An Outline of a Theory of Civilisation',"(「文明論之概略」を読む) by Iwanami Shoten. Besides, he contributed several more noteworthy as well as controversial works on Japanese culture or the process of translation in modern Japan. Most noteworthy is his concept of basso ostinato. Maruyama referred to this musicological concept to capture a socio-historically substratum underlying human thought. Although basso ostinato is in constant flux, it is experienced by people as a relatively stable intellectual framework through which people give meaning to life.