Review: [untitled]Author(s): Carl BielefeldtSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 173-175Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2058493 .Accessed: 18/02/2011 23:59

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BOOK REVIEWS-JAPAN 173

framework of the U.S. -Japanese alliance, especially under Nakasone Yasuhiro's admin- istration.

By comparison, Rix's chapters are both essentially literature surveys with little original analysis and few coherent and sustained arguments. They are replete with highly general and abstract, and often tired and vacuous, statements that obfuscate rather than illuminate complex issues, as when he declares that "it is time to say that the national bureaucracy plays a pivotal (but by no means monopoly) role in the Japanese state structure" (p. 72). The fundamental problem with these two chapters is that Rix was apparently not sure what he wanted to argue about the given topics.

That problem is shared by Horne's chapter on the economy and the political system, an obviously unwieldy and spongy topic. Amazingly, however, his other chapter is very different: he knowledgeably and expertly summarizes recent developments in Japanese financial institutions and policy debates, traces the collapse of policy consensus both in government and in the financial industry since the 1970s under the pressure of internationalization, and highlights the rising role of the LDP in the policy-making process. It is almost as if the two chapters had been written by two different authors.

Even more impressive are the chapters by Ito and Collick. In a gem of a case study, Ito persuasively argues that the Provisional Commission on Administrative Reform (Rincho) attempted, but ultimately failed, to create a new policy-making regime to supersede the well-entrenched but increasingly obsolete and immobilist budget-pri- macy system. Collick provides an expertly and elegantly crafted review of the history of Japanese social-security and welfare policies in general and the highly politicized issues of free medical care for the aged and the reform of the pensions system in particular.

Overall this is a very good and useful book that deals with wide-ranging aspects of policy-making in contemporary Japan rather than narrowly focusing on its partic- ularly dynamic or immobilist aspects. Despite the uneven quality of the chapters and occasional typographical errors, this work deserves the serious attention of all those interested in contemporary Japanese politics. The citations that contain a goodly num- ber of British and Australian sources should also prove most welcome, particularly to American readers.

HARUHIRO FUKUI University of California, Santa Barbara

The Lotus Sutra in Japanese Culture. Edited by GEORGE J. TANABE, JR., and WILLA JANE TANABE. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1989. xii, 239 pp. $25.00.

This book, based on a 1984 conference in Honolulu, contains ten relatively short studies ranging from textual analysis of the sutra chapters through theological and historical material on the Japanese Tendai school to the uses and abuses of the Lotus in several areas of Japanese culture and society. As is so often the case in Japanese Buddhist studies, the Heian and Kamakura periods (794-1333) predominate, but there are also chapters on modern Japan; the intervening millennium remains largely unexplored. In approach the studies fall more or less neatly into two equal lots: those that primarily provide overviews of their subjects and those that focus more narrowly on particular topics.

Tendai scholar Shioiri Ryodo provides an example of howJapanese textual historians have dissected the Lotus into its several strata. The late Tamura Yoshiro combines a

174 THE JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

review of some of the standard categories used by Lotus exegetes with a brief rehearsal of the sutra's tradition in China and Japan. One can appreciate the editors' reasons for starting with these studies, but they are the weakest in the collection and suffer from the style of translation.

Three other Japanese scholars have benefited from-quite graceful translations here. Miya Tsugio gives a clear outline and description of the types of Lotus painting both devotional images and didactic illustration-popular in the Heian and Kamakura eras. Yamada Shozen gives a straightforward account of the development of Lotus poetry in the Heian period, followed by a look at three famous poets from the end of that era: Saigyo, Jien, and Shunzei. More ambitious and interesting is Kuroda Toshio's contribution, which deals with the literature, known as kirigami or kiroku, that records (paradoxically enough) the esoteric "oral transmissions" (kuden) of Tendai. Although the author does not go very far in relating this literature to the famous honji-suijaku notion (through which Japanese kami were associated with Buddhist divinities), it does provide a helpful overview of the historical development and some of the religious characteristics of this difficult and fascinating material.

The remaining five chapters are by Western scholars and for the most part offer more detailed treatment of more circumscribed topics. Paul Groner's "The Lotus Sutra and Saicho's Interpretation of the Realization of Buddhahood in This Very Body," on one of the classical doctrinal issues of Heian scholastic Buddhism, exemplifies the kind of lucid, well-documented work we have come to expect from this leading scholar of Tendai. Another famous Tendai prelate, the tenth-century figure Ryogen, is treated from a very different perspective by Neil McMullin. In his gently ironical tone, McMullin describes the secular connections behind Ryogen's remarkable career in order to make the point that the Lotus Sutra functioned as a political text in the Heian and that perceived mastery of the text-especially skill in debating its teachings-was a prime means to ecclesiastical power.

Religious politics of another and more troubling sort is the subject of George Tanabe's chapter on Tanaka Chigaku, a modern Buddhist nationalist who died at the outset of the Pacific War. Tanabe neatly lays out the Nichiren Buddhist doctrinal positions behind Tanaka's advocacy of coercive proselytizing (shakubuku) and describes his vision of Japan's "national essence" (kokutai) as the historical instantiation of the truth of the Lotus and the "fundamental organ for unifying the whole world." This should be read by anyone who still thinks that the ideas of the Buddhist religion do not lend themselves to aggression. Anyone who still thinks that the Buddhist religion is primarily a body of ideas hovering in disembodied abstraction above the Asian landscape would do well to read Allan Grapard's chapter on the Lotus in Kunisaki, which deals with the elaborate system of correspondences through which the structure and content of the sutra were mapped onto a region of Kyushu sacred to the divinity Hachiman. This study is the longest and most theoretically reflective in the volume. Finally, Helen Hardacre provides a brief report, drawn from her own and others' studies, on three lay movements devoted to the Lotus: Butsuryiuko, Reiyiukai, and Rissho Ko- seikai.

The editors are to be congratulated for producing a volume that, while it displays a considerable range of theme and types of scholarship, nevertheless remains surprisingly coherent and accessible. To be sure, the editors have purchased these qualities in part through the inclusion of several chapters of relatively light scholarly weight; still, by opting for breadth and balance of coverage, by keeping the contributions short, by adding a general index and bibliography and a helpful introduction that tries to pull the studies together, and perhaps by omitting a Japanese character glossary that might

BOOK REVIEWS-KOREA 175

have driven up the price, they have given us a work that could almost serve as an introductory textbook on the Lotus Sutra in Japan. I plan to try it on an undergraduate seminar.

CARL BIELEFELDT Stanford University

KOREA

Korean-American Relations: Documents Pertaining to the Far Eastern Diplomacy of the United States. Vol. 3: The Period of Diminishing Influence, 1896-1905. Ed- ited by SCOTT S. BURNETT. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. xiv, 304 pp. $24.00.

This book completes a three-volume project begun almost forty years ago. It begins with the aftermath in Korea of the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War and takes the story up to the establishment of the Japanese protectorate over Korea in 1905, an event that led to the termination of official Korean-American diplomatic relations for the sub- sequent four decades.

The documents are organized both chronologically and topically. The chronological section on the United States in Korea includes specific subsections on American mis- sionaries, advisers, and business interests, as well as U.S. legation business. In many respects editor Scott S. Burnett's topical coverage is quite impressive. Twenty separate topics or subtopics are covered, ranging from the treatment of Korean refugees to northern timber concessions. The book contains 308 individual documents; they reflect almost exclusively an American point of view. All but one were written by American diplomats in either Seoul or Washington, which is not surprising since virtually all the materials are taken from U.S. Department of State records available on microfilm from the National Archives. Perhaps in an effort to retain the original format and theme of the series, no effort has been made to draw on official Korean records, such as the extremely valuable Ku Han'guk oegyo munso, edited by the Korea University Asiatic Research Center (Seoul: Koryo taehakkyo ch'ulp'ansa, 1965-73), especially volumes 11 and 12, or on unofficial American records, such as the papers of Horace N. Allen at the New York Public Library.

Despite these limitations, Burnett's volume provides a wealth of information on early Korean-American relations. Specialists in American diplomacy and in Korean foreign affairs will benefit. Indeed, all of us working in these fields owe Burnett a debt of gratitude for completing the final volume of a series that has long been in- dispensable to our understanding of late nineteenth-century Korean diplomatic history. I only wish that the publisher had not been forced by cost constraints to print fifty- eight lines of text per page. My eyesight is not what it was twenty years ago.

ROBERT R. SWARTOUT, JR. Carroll College

Article Contentsp. 173p. 174p. 175

Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. i-vii+1-228Front Matter [pp. ]Editor's Note [pp. 1]Institutional Change and Economic Growth in China: The View from the Villages [pp. 3-25]Sri LankaIntroduction [pp. 26-29]Colonization and Ethnic Conflict in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka [pp. 30-55]The Material Basis for Separatism: The Tamil Eelam Movement in Sri Lanka [pp. 56-77]The Political Construction of Defensive Nationalism: The 1968 Temple-Entry Crisis in Northern Sri Lanka [pp. 78-96]

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Correction [pp. 227]Back Matter [pp. ]