Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop

By Ivan P. Hall

As Washington and Tokyo sort out their new power relationship and roles in post-Cold War Asia, Japan continues to block the access of foreign professionals, both Westerners and Asians alike. These cartels of the mind--market barriers--serve neither the professed goals of Japan nor those of the United States. Despite repeated promises to open up, Japanese legal, media, academic, and research organizations run an intellectual closed shop. American lawyers are stymied in efforts to help U.S. firms enter the Japanese market. Foreign correspondents are systematically walled off from the most important sources. Resident Western and Asian academics--even foreign students--in search of stable and productive careers and education find the roads blocked. Foreign scientists and engineers are kept out of Japan's state-of-the-art laboratories. Japan aspires to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and a larger political voice, but its grand intellectual parsimony is simply not worthy of a world economic power, argues Ivan Hall. Cartels of the Mind looks deeply into the causes of these cultural and institutional barriers, and examines ineffective past attempts to challenge them.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393045374
• ISBN13: 9780393045376
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.0" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Humble Enough to Learn the Language?

Like Karel Van Wolferen's the Enigma of Japanese Power, and more recently Alex Kerr's brilliant Dogs and Demons, Cartels of the Mind should be viewed not only for lessons in how foreigners can or cannot relate to Japan, but to understand how the Japanese people are being damaged by the subtle, yet brutal systematic mind control of Japan's Ministry of Education.This is in response to the review that says:"Speaking of "closedness", there must be much more opportunities in Japan than now, only if any foreign people speak and write Japanese fluently. This must be a certain barrier, but it can be easily overcome if they are humble enough to learn Japanese language, the very essence of Japanese culture."I have lived in Japan for ten years, am fluent in the language and must state that learning Japanese may have gained me a few half-hearted compliments, but far from being a road in, most foreigners are even discouraged from displaying their abilities. It has helped me in social situations and with academic pursuits, but it has never helped make inroads towards career advancement, or helped penetrate the obstacles that Mr. Hall discusses in his book. He's right on target!

Exposing Japan

It's hard to find fault in a book that speaks the truth so eloquently..and so courageously. Unfortunately, Japan doesn't have enough people of Ivan Hall's character - people willing to take a stand and raise awareness of what is really happening underneath the tatemae the Japanese have so carefully constructed. Gutless Americans are not a rare breed in Japan, and the fact that many have bought into the fact that the treatment of foreigners as "others" is just shou ga nai (a fact of life) continues to reinforce to the Japanese that there is something intuitively correct about Nihonjinron (the sense of the Japanese as being a special people by blood and the Japanese language a language only masterable by pure Japanese). And gutless American businessmen and longterm residents aren't the only ones to blame; Japanologists and Japanese academics in the U.S. sell-out in equally large numbers, their motives being that they don't want to risk hurting their Japanese colleagues' feelings or chance losing research money or grants. Spineless.In Cartels, Ivan Hall puts his professional career and reputation on the line for a noble purpose. There is no doubt that he was aware of the negative publicity he would receive in Japan for exposing this deeply engrained social corruption, but his work is larger than him. It was written for all of the foreigners who have had enough of Japan's insular ideology. For those of us who pour our time, energy, and heart into Japan as residents and who deserve nothing less than acknowledgment and treatment as similar people. Ivan Hall hits the nail on the head when he exposes Japanese kokusaika (internationalization) as an attempt not to open its culture up to people of other cultures, but to instead emphasize differences and block access to Japanese culture. Learn English, speak English to people who appear to be Westerners, and you have achieved kokusaika. Allowing Westerners to move to Japan, learn Japanese fluently, and behave like us, though, is unthinkable. Hogwash.

Probing epochal mysteries

I was one of the commentators who was approached by thepublisher in 1997 to write a pre-publication recommendation for thebook's jacket. I was a delighted to oblige and this is the unabridged version of what I wrote: "All talk of globalization to the contrary, the Japanese mind remains systematically closed to Western attempts at intellectual engagement. As Ivan Hall demonstrates over and over again in this important book, Japan's exquisitely aloof and unWestern intelligentsia is evidently more than happy to perpetuate this state of affairs." More than two years later, I would say that I am even more aware of the book's importance today than I was then. A Harvard-educated historian who boasts more than three decades' experience dealing with Japan as a cultural diplomat, as a correspondent, and, most recently, as a professor, Ivan Hall is unsurpassed among American scholars in his understanding of Japan's intellectual closed shop. Even more important, in a field where corporate funding has acted increasingly powerfully to frustrate the spirit of free inquiry that is the hallmark of all true Western scholarship, Hall is virtually alone in the courage and independence of mind he brings to the epochal mysteries of how the Japanese politico-economic system truly works. He thus stands in particularly piquant contrast to those among his American academic peers who would apologize for the aspects of Japan criticized in this book. If anything, Hall has erred on the side of gentleness in his criticisms. My own interpretation of the true rationale for Japan's highly exclusionary "press club" system, for instance, is considerably harsher than Hall's. One thing should be emphasized: for all the talk of Japan's economic "collapse" in recent years, in the ways that matter (or at least should matter) to American policy makers, Japan is stronger than ever these days. It has already surpassed the United States in net exports (that is exports netted for imported content), for instance, as well as in the absolute size of its manufacturing sector. Most important of all, by dint of its soaring current account surpluses, it now towers over the United States in its ability to project economic power abroad. It is a tribute to the profoundly unWestern way that information flows in Japan that Westerners ever believed that the perennially underestimated Japanese economy had collapsed in the 1990s. --Eamonn Fingleton, author of In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity

A detailed look at a side of Japan that few will deal with.

Basically, I see this work as trying to destroy the barrier that the academic world, both in the U.S. and Japan, has errected to shield many of the patterns of behavior within Japanese culture that are less than "fair." Moreover, it is at it's best an attempt to look into a subject that too few academics are willing to because of the sensitive nature of the issues involved. Hall is one of the few academics who does not equate being critical of Japan with racism, Japan bashing or political incorrectness. The book also has a great strength in that it covers areas that are often overlooked in the tradition of Japanology. Law and Journalism are seldom mentioned in surveys of the tensions between Japan and America and academics are almost ignored as a matter of course. Hall opens up the possibility that the U.S. is not simply pushing our values on other cultures and expecting them to do things the "American way." I think it is a very important book becasue it points out the desparity between the treatment of Japanese residing and working in professions here in the U.S. and Amercians in professional positions in Japan. This alone makes Hall's book very valuable because it is a truth that many ignore completely. I would highly recomend this book to anyone who is looking for a more accurate picture of the current situation facing Americans seeking a carrer in Japan. Thank you very much, Bryce King II