Cartels of the Mind: Japan's Intellectual Closed Shop

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.

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.