cover image Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop

Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop

Ivan P. Hall. W. W. Norton & Company, $25 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-393-04537-6

Hall, a university professor in Japan for a decade, and before that a correspondent and diplomat for 20 years, accuses U.S. politicians and diplomats of not confronting Japanese authorities about their discrimination against certain classes of Americans who live in Japan: students, teachers, journalists and lawyers, among others. In a polemic that is likely to interest mainly scholars, he compares the situation of Japanese intellectuals in the U.S.--access to information, work contracts and so on--with Japanese efforts to exclude foreign journalists from important press conferences, to isolate academics and bind them to discriminatory contracts and to impede lawyers from assisting U.S. businesses. Hall notes that the Japanese may make small concessions when delicately confronted about such matters, but he asserts that their hesitation is deliberate. He links this attitude to a Japanese legacy of historic unwillingness to open the country, which, he predicts, will continue unless the U.S. makes an issue of it. (Nov.)