Bamboozled!: How America Loses the Intellectual Game with Japan and Its Implications for Our Future in Asia / Edition 1

by Ivan P. Hall

Overview

As the influence of the United States in Asia declines with the end of the Cold War, America must look more to brains than military might in achieving our objectives in the region. But after repeatedly allowing Japan - our closest ally in Asia - to mislead us intellectually and psychologically, how well are we prepared to deal with less friendly emerging powers like China and India? Based on three decades of on-the-spot observation and participation in Japan, Ivan Hall's provocative work draws the reader into a world of intellectual manipulation and gullibility, false images, emotional blackmail, financial beguilement, and fatuous expectations. It illuminates the many ways that American ideological hubris and Japanese pleading for special treatment combine to deprive our trans-Pacific dialogue of the honesty, openness, and plain common sense of our trans-Atlantic intellectual ties with Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765610065
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/30/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ivan P. Hall, born on an American missionary college campus in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1932, received his B.A. in European History from Princeton, an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School, and his PhD in Japanese History from Harvard in 1969. He is the author of Mori Arinori (1973) and Cartels of the Mind: Japan’s Intellectual Closed Shop (1997). The latter was chosen by Business Week as one of the “Ten Best Business Books of 1997.” Since 1999 he has been a visiting professor in Japanese history (pre-modern, modern, and intellectual) at Temple University of Japan in Tokyo.

Table of Contents

Part I Illusion: “On a Cloth Untrue”; Chapter one Economic Mirage; Chapter two Anti–Americanism; Chapter three New Old Right; Chapter four Limping Liberalism; Chapter five Pan-Asianism; Chapter six Samurai Ethic; Part ii Collusion: “With a Twisted Cue”; Chapter seven Special Pleading; Chapter eight Ostracism; Chapter nine Yen; Chapter ten Dollars; Chapter eleven Organization; Chapter twelve People; Part iii Self-Delusion: “And Elliptical Billiard Balls”; Chapter thirteen Gullible’s Travels; Chapter fourteen Roller Coaster; Chapter fifteen MacArthur Maxim; Chapter sixteen Reischauer Rubric; Chapter seventeen Number-Oneism; Chapter eighteen Brief Awakening; Chapter nineteen Dumbing Down; Chapter 101 Conclusion: The Punishment Fits the Crime;

Editorial Reviews

Another book destined to arouse passions — in this case, among Japanese nationalists and American liberals. Hall rejects outright the case that the United States should be gentle with Japan because of the latter's current economic problems. Instead, he sees this approach as just the most recent Japanese ploy for bamboozling Americans into believing that there will be disaster if Japan is forced to abandon its mercantilist policies. He argues that Japanese officials have skillfully intimidated U.S. policymakers by holding up the threat of anti-Americanism, from both the left and the right in Japan. Accordingly, because of mistaken views of Japanese cultural and political practices, Americans lack the nerve to call the Japanese bluff. And the Japanese money that has poured into American universities has made American scholars intellectually timid about exposing the Japanese game. The author's case is overdrawn, but he has opened the door to rethinking the dangers of suppressing tough-minded analyses for fear of offending the sensitivities of others, which are magnified by the American addiction to cultural relativism.

Foreign Affairs

Hall (formerly of the United States Information Service and now a professor of Japanese history at Temple U. of Japan) critiques current American political and economic thinking about Japan, suggesting that the country is both economically stronger and less inclined to follow American political and economic wishes than is commonly perceived. He suggests that this situation is the result of American "insouciant, inattentive hubris" and purposeful Japanese deception. He argues that Japan has manipulated the American government over important trade and economic matters and that it is important that American political and intellectual figures understand the intellectual game in its broadest sense, running the gamut from philosophical ideas, historical perceptions, and psychological stratagems to the financial, organizational and rhetorical structures that are set up for bilateral dialogue. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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