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Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop Hardcover – November 17, 1997

by Ivan P. Hall (Author)

12 customer reviews

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An inside look at Japan's use of professional barriers, both institutional and psychological, against the entire outside world.

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.

Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop

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Editorial Reviews

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Ivan Hall's Cartels of the Mind, had it come out, say, a decade ago, might have been read as just another take on the trade wars. It is that--partly. Hall writes with economy and grace about how Japan denies access to foreign attorneys, correspondents, professors and scientific researchers with the same systematic efficiency applied over the years to car parts, semiconductors, baseball bats and beef. He devotes a concise chapter to each of the professions just noted, explaining how each is part of the "closed shop" of his subtitle. But we have to read Hall's book differently now.... The intellectual closed shop, then, is also a social and political issue, and Hall does a good job of connecting the dots, especially with regard to Japan's new and grand ambitions. -- Nation, Patrick Smith

About the Author

Ivan Hall has spent nearly three decades in Japan as a correspondent, cultural diplomat, and academic. He was the first associate director of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and spent nine years teaching as a professor in Japanese universities. He lives in Tokyo.

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Product details

Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (November 17, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393045374
ISBN-13: 978-0393045376
Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1 x 8.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,050,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2201 in Books > Reference > Encyclopedias & Subject Guides > Business
- #4355 in Books > History > Asia > Japan
- #9498 in Books > Business & Money > International

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3.8 out of 5 stars

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Passionate plea, well argued

ByJoe6Packon October 16, 2014

Format: Hardcover

The title says it all. It's mainly how foreign academics are mistreated (and other professionals in their institutions as well) by Japanese universities and the Monbusho. This debunks the myth about Japan wanting the best and brightest as desired immigrants. Basically once they are long enough in Japan, get tenure rights and become expensive they are thrown out, as university administrators prefer "fresh blood", cheaper new Ph.D.s and more amenable younger colleagues. This has happened before in the latter Meiji era, when Japanese officialdom felt that they had learned enough and kicked their advisers out Now this will get worse as Japanese universities struggle for the diminishing student in take and need to cut staffing. Guess who will get the chop first? Also this debunks the myth about Monbusho wishing to internationalize Japanese university ediucation, after they managed to close down almost all foreign (mostly UK and US) university branches in the country during a decade long sustained campaign. The book also covers the lot of foreign correspondents and attorneys, but is more passionate (and convincing) on the fate of foreign scholars.

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Wishing for a more subtle analysis...

ByAzazelloon October 31, 2011

Format: Hardcover

Halfway through this book I was enjoying Hall's fists-flying attack on the insularity of Japanese organizations. By the end of the book, however, I found myself increasingly forced into the camp of cultural apologists he continually warns against throughout. While Hall is no doubt right to be righteously indignant about a lot of what he describes, his entirely unquestioned faith in American-style universalism as the only proper alternative ultimately comes across as arrogant and, um... all too American in its assumption that open access to other people's cultures is an absolute right. Even if you despise its effects, the 'particularity' espoused by certain mainstream strands of Japanese culture does represent a distinct alternative to American-style universalism, and one that has proven itself robust and alluring to large numbers of people. I would love to read a study that critiques this 'particularity' discourse more on its own terms, rather than attacking it from the outside with a different ideology - one in some ways equally dogmatic and difference-averse. Reading this as an American, in English, Hall's writing feels all too smug about the rightness of the American way of doing things, for all people everywhere.

All in all reading the book was like watching one of those polemical documentaries that exhaustively argue one side of an issue - at first you are wrapped up in the damning evidence and thrill of wrongs being exposed, but after the same point is made over and over and over in the same way, you gradually grow skeptical about whether the situation could really be so simple. It would have made a fine magazine feature, but at this length I was hoping for more.

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Probing epochal mysteries

ByEamonn Fingletonon December 2, 1999

Format: Hardcover

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