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

As the relative 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.

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.

Prologue: In the Shadow of 11 September Introduction: The Old Deal - Why Our Muddled Thinking Matters I. Illusion: "On a Cloth Untrue" Japanese Mentalities, American Misreadings 1. Economic Mirage - The Asian Crisis and "Change" 2. Anti-Americanism - "Sayonara" as the Ultimate Blackmail 3. New Old Right - Reactionaries in "Neoconservative" Garb 4. Limping Liberalism - Civil Courage Derided as "Leftist Lite" 5. Pan Asianism - Behind the Bromides of "East-West Bridging" 6. Samurai Ethic - Premature Prognoses of "Individualism" II. Collusion: "With a Twisted Cue" 7. Special Pleading - Our Rhetorical Trouncings on Trade 8. Ostracism - Sidelining the Heterodox 9. Yen - The Pavlovian Trot for Japan's Academic Largesse 10. Dollars - The Long Retreat of American Philanthropy 11. Organization - The Mutual Understanding Industry 12. People - Of Buffers, Barnacles, and Gatekeepers III. Self Delusion: "And Elliptical Billiard Balls" 13. Gullible's Travels - Our Four Faulty Vision Things 14. Rollercoaster - The Prewar Matrix of Plus-Minus Images 15. MacArthur Maxim - Democratic Missionizing through the 1950s 16. Reischauer Rubric - Cultural Sensitizing from the 1960s 17. Number-Oneism - Economic Giantizing in the 1970s 18. Brief Awakening - Revisionist Turnaround in the 1980s 19. Dumbing Down - PC and Other Intellectual Follies of the 1990s Conclusion: The Punishment Fits the Crime

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.