Hal O'Brien

I had gone to Hitotsubashi to interview a professor who was, at the time, making waves. Starting in 1990, a number of Japanese businessmen and academics had begun saying publicly: Hmmmm, perhaps our business system really is different from what they have in Europe or the United States. The man Hitotsubashi, Professor Iwao Nakatani, was one of the most prominent and respected members of this group, and I'd spent the afternoon listening to his analysis while, through the window, I watched the petals drifting down.

On the way back to the station, I saw a sign that indicated, in Japanese, that there would be Western-language books inside. I walked to the back of the narrow bookstore and for the thousandth time felt both intrigued and embarrassed at the consequences of the worldwide spread of the English language. In row upon row sat an incongruous jumble of books that had nothing in common except that they were published in English. Self-help manuals by Zig Ziglar. Bodice-rippers from the Harlequin series. A Betty Crocker cookbook. The complete works of Sigmund Freud. And two books concerning Friedrich List.

Friedrich List!!! For at least five years, I'd been scanning used bookstores in Japan and America looking for just these books. I'd scoured the English-language stores in Taiwan, which until recently had specialized in pirated reprints of English-language books for about one-tenth the original cost. I'd called the legendary Strand Book Store, in Manhattan, from my home in Kuala Lumpur, begging them to send me a note about the success of their search (it failed) rather than making me wait on hold. I'd looked through English-language libraries without success. In all that time, these were the first books by or about List I'd actually laid my eyes on.

One was a biography, by a professor in the North of England. Another was a translation, by the same professor, of The Natural System of Political Economy, a short book List had originally written in German in the 1830s. Each was a slim volume, which to judge by the dust on its cover has been sitting on the shelf for years. I gasped when I opened the first book's cover and saw the price listed as 9,500 yen -- about $75. For the set? I asked hopefully. No, apiece, the young woman running the store told me. Books were always expensive in Japan, but even so, this seemed steep. No doubt the books had been priced in the era when $1 was worth many more yen than it was in 1992. I opened my wallet, pulled out a 10,000-yen note, took my change and the biography, and left the store. A few feet down the sidewalk, I turned around, walked back to the store, and used the rest of my money buying the other book. I would always have regretted passing it up.