East AsiaPILGRIMAGES AND SPIRITUAL QUESTS INJAPAN. Edited by Peter Ackermann, Dolores Martinez,Maria Rodriguez, and Del Alisal. New York: Routledge, 2007.Pp. xxi + 184. Paper, $39.95.

This edited collection of essays was inspired by the venueof the 1996 Japan Anthropology Workshop at Santiago deCompostela, which is, of course, the sacred center of one of thegreat medieval Christian pilgrimages. The authors, amongthem notable European and Japanese scholars in the field likeJ. Hendry, N. Kouamé, E. Hoshino, take a new look at Japanesepilgrimage by following “the borderline along what might ormight not be called ‘religious’,” an approach whose object ofstudy is better described as a sacred quest. Taking their cuefrom the insightful work of N. Akira, they call attention to ashift in religious practice that has taken place in Japan sincethe 1970s, from a quest for genze riyaku (these worldly ben-efits) to a quest for genze ridatsu (escape from these worldlyaffairs). Their general conclusion is that Japanese spiritualquests mirror this shift. The essays also make another criticalpoint—that the old model of pilgrimage based on V. Turner’sidea of communitas is not really useful; individual Japanesepilgrims have their own experiences and “construct their ownsense of what they are doing,” and their own sense of self thatis formed from the purity of the road. The book is divided intofour sections. Part One, pilgrimages, paths, and places, offersgeneral theoretical and comparative studies of pilgrimages.Particularly noteworthy here are P. Ackermann’s very usefuloverview, “Travel as a Spiritual Quest in Japan” and T. Yoshi-da’s “Strangers and Pilgrimage in Village Japan,” which care-fully examines the notion of the stranger (marebito) as itrelates to Japanese pilgrimage. Part two, reconstructing thequest, part three, the quest for the magic, liminal or non-ordinary, and part four, “the quest for vocational fulfillment”explore further afield with specific analyses that include J.Hendry’s study of Japanese international theme parks as anew form of pilgrimage, A. Santos’s study of “inner pilgrim-age” in the film, Hiroshima mon amour, and H. Nakamaki’sstudy of local Japanese civil servants’ overseas study trips asa novel form of pilgrimage in an age of Internationalization.All the essays in this volume throw into doubt the typicaldistinction between sacred and profane that scholars oftenuse to define religion. Overall, despite some bibliographicgaps here and there (perhaps due to this book’s apparentlylong time of gestation), it is an excellent addition to Japanesepilgrimage studies.

Mark MacWilliamsSt. Lawrence University

THE WOMAN WHO DISCOVERED PRINTING. ByT. H. Barrett. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.Pp. 192. $25.00.

This concise, yet immensely enlightening work under-takes more than simply pinning down the precise date atwhich “printing” per se began. Barrett is both the foremost

western authority on the origins of East Asian printing, and aspecialist in the religious history of medieval China. With alight hand, he applies “quite meticulous scrutiny” of histori-cal texts and data, essaying to learn not merely how printingbegan in East Asia—centuries before Europeans adopted it—butalso why. He persuasively suggests that “because Chinesescribal culture, based on paper and the ink brush, wasimmensely superior to” the quill pens and parchment “ofmedieval Europe, printing simply did not have the immediateappeal [in China] that it did in the West.” Yet, he also arguesthat when “one looks back at the religious culture of Chinaafter the fall of the Han dynasty, it is possible to see muchmore that was conducive to the adoption of printing than canbe found in the intellectual culture of the educated elite whoserved as bureaucrats,” i.e., among those whom we usuallystyle “Confucians.” In other words, religious practices amongmedieval Buddhists and Taoists alike provided historicalimpetus for the very invention of printing. We see that inven-tion, Barrett maintains, at the court of the only woman “Em-peror” in China’s history—Empress Wu (r. 691-705). “Taoistpriests,” he reminds us, “were experts in paperwork andprocedure” for “conveying texts to the spirit world . . . usingtalismanic forms of Chinese characters.” The Buddhist san-gha, meanwhile, from its infancy in India, was “devoted notsimply to religious training . . . but also to the maintenance ofthe Buddha’s word,” and Mahayana Buddhism added a “ten-dency to assign a very high value to the preservation andcopying of written texts.” In medieval China, these religiousfactors kindled a technological shift from intaglio images “toinstruments in which the surface was cut away to leavecharacters standing in relief . . . in the manner of a woodenprinting block,” most particularly in “the earliest dated pieceof printing now in existence”–the Great Spell of Unsullied PureLight—produced at Empress Wu’s order, to disseminate tan-gible “word” of her spiritual eminence. Barrett argues that“the religious concepts associated with this alien [i.e., Bud-dhist] notion of holy objects made the development of print-ing take place more smoothly in China.” He does not claim tohave recovered definitive proof that Empress Wu “discoveredprinting” in the 690s. However, the “circumstantial evi-dence” is indeed compelling, and Barrett assures us of furtherresearch on how “Taoist printing” stimulated the world’searliest printing technology. This superlatively erudite, yethighly readable work illumines what the modern world owes,not only to China’s only female “emperor,” but also to medi-eval China’s Buddhists and Taoists.

Russell KirklandUniversity of Georgia, Athens

A ZEN LIFE IN NATURE: MUSÔ SOSEKI AND HISGARDENS. By Keir Davidson. Michigan Monograph Seriesin Japanese Studies, No.56. Ann Arbor: Center for JapaneseStudies, University of Michigan, 2007. Pp. xii + 298; illustra-tions. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $28.00.

The lived-life of Musô is rendered in exquisite detailthrough compelling writing revealing the spirit of Musô

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embodied as the still vibrant, deeply-affecting gardens withwhich he remains associated. Davidson focuses on theTemple of the Western Direction [ , Kô-inzanSaihô-ji] and the Moss Garden [ , koke-dera], in narratingMusô’s influence on “the landscape as it exists, finding outboth what it is and the effects its different forms and cycleshave on one’s consciousness and, second, the process ofdesign and construction by which the insights gained can betransformed into a physical reality.” This is an extraordinarybook, an innovative approach to researching and writingabout still-venerated Buddhist temple gardens of Japan.Gardens participate in the lived lives of people both creatingand experiencing gardens. Davidson presents gardens inmedias res., as ma [ ], “. . . the intervals that mark theworking, or progression, of process in action and . . . thethings that indicate the existence of these intervals.” Indeed,this highly-recommended book itself is a pregnant spacewhere innovative conceptions of garden take life.

Norris Brock JohnsonUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

THE WRITING OF WEDDINGS IN MIDDLE-PERIODCHINA: TEXT AND RITUAL PRACTICE IN THEEIGHTH THROUGH FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. ByChristian De Pee. Edited by Roger T. Ames, SUNY Series inChinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 365. Cloth $75.00, paper$27.95.

This book is an elaborate and nuanced study of weddingrituals in middle-period Chinese history. De Pee draws upona rich array of textual sources, with four chapters focusingon ritual manuals, wedding correspondence, almanacs andcalendrical materials, and legal codes. His central goal is toexamine these texts as ritual objects themselves and tolocate them within the broader context of cultural practicesand the surrounding discursive formations. This requires anexplication of evolving perceptions of antiquity, the ongoingrequirements of each genre, and the shifting social relationsover time that inform the composition of these texts. Theexploration of these discursive fields leads into an im-pressive range of topics far beyond the wedding ritualsthemselves, with elaborately detailed discussions of anti-quarianism, cosmology, literary genres, tomb architecture,and more. The author repeatedly (and harshly) takes modernsocial historians to task for regarding these textual materialssimply as a transparent medium reflecting the actual mar-riage practices of the time. He is exceedingly successful indemonstrating the limitations of such an approach, thoughat times he oversimplifies the work of his social historypeers. This book opens up new venues for thinking aboutmiddle-period Chinese history and will be highly useful toTang, Song, and Yuan historians and literary scholars. Itmay, however, be too densely contextual for the broaderreader.

Peter DitmansonPembroke College, Oxford University

THE HONGZHOU SCHOOL OF CHAN BUDDHISMIN EIGHTH- THROUGH TENTH-CENTURY CHINA.By Jinhua Jia. Albany: State University of New York Press,2007. Pp. xv+ 220, maps. Cloth, $65.00, paper, $22.95.

This careful study reviews the traditional accounts ofthe life of Mazu Daoyi (709-788) and his Hongzhou School ofTang dynasty (618-907) Chan Buddhism. First, Jia presentsthe hagiographical record of Mazu (Chapter One) and hisdisciples (Chapter Two), after which she discusses hersources (Chapter Three) and the practices ascribed to Hong-zhou Chan (Chapter Four). Chapters Five and Six describehow and why Hongzhou Chan came to be seen as the basisfor the orthodox Chinese Linji Chan lineage during the Songdynasty (960-1279), when it was transmitted to Japan asRinzai, and Korea as Imje. This topic and Jia’s approach to ithas been available in Japanese and Chinese secondary schol-arship for many decades, with Y. Seizan’s (1922-2006)research behind nearly every breakthrough. Yet, Englishlanguage readers have heretofore had only glimpses inarticles, footnotes, and dissertations of the intricate webused to weave the orthodox Chinese Chan genealogicallineage. Jia’s book successfully steers clear of many of thehotly contested questions of Chan/Zen studies, includingwhether or not any of these figures actually lived or areliterary constructions, by instead presenting succinct syn-opses of the received tradition and selections from texts withuseful translations for undergraduate and beginning gradu-ate students interested in Chan Buddhism.

George A. KeyworthKyoto, Japan

INVENTING HUI-NENG, THE SIXTH PATRIARCH:HAGIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY IN EARLYCH’AN. By John Jorgensen. Sinica Leidensia, 68. Leiden andBoston: Brill, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 862, maps. €185.

This massive tome effectively addresses how and whymedieval Chinese Buddhists invented the figure of Huineng,the famous Sixth Patriarch of the Chan tradition, out of “afactual vacuum” as a “constructed saint” in order to usurpthe legacy of Bodhidharma (d. 530?) from Shenxiu (606-706)and other disparate early Chan factions to form an orthodoxline of transmission through the southern Chan School. Thethesis of this book closely corresponds with Jorgensen’s1987 article on the Imperial Lineage of Chan Buddhism,which forms the backbone of modern Chan/Zen/Son Studiesin English. Jorgensen asserts that Shenhui (684-758) and hisfollowers used Huineng and the Platform Sutra to appealsimultaneously to both traditional Indian Buddhist aspectsof legitimacy such as the cult of the book in the Mahayana, aswell as to Confucian orthodoxy which presents Confucius(551-479 BCE) in the Analects. The amount of detail Jor-gensen presents is daunting, yet still convincing, given thathis central thesis that the hagiography of Huineng mirrorsthat of Confucius is nearly impossible to verify. The impor-tance of this remarkable specialized research volume lies

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more in Jorgensen’s careful evaluation of the Chinese,Korean, and Japanese sources that attest to Huineng’s famein East Asia, with Appendix Two on the authorship of theZutang ji deserving special consideration.

George A. KeyworthKyoto, Japan

BuddhismTHE CHAPTER ON THE MUNDANE PATH(LAUKIKAMARGA) IN THE SRAVAKABHUMI: ATRILINGUAL EDITION (SANSKRIT, TIBETAN,CHINESE), ANNOTATED TRANSLATION ANDINTRODUCTORY STUDY. By Florin Deleanu. StudiaPhilologica Buddhica Monograph Series, XXa and XXb.Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies,2006. 2 volumes (continuously paginated). Pp. 680. ¥ 3,100.

This book is a very thorough study of an exceedinglysmall piece of a monumental Buddhist treatise. Fromthe vast compendium of Buddhist doctrine known asthe Yogacarabhumi, Deleanu focuses on Book XIII, theSravakabhumi, which presents mainstream Buddhist [i.e.,non-bodhisattva] practices. His project is to edit, translate,and comment on the first chapter of the Sravakabhumi’sfourth section, which sets forth the so-called “mundane path,”comprising the practices allegedly mastered by Buddhaduring his early studies: the four absorptions (dhyana), thefour immaterial attainments (arupyasamapatti), and the fivesupernatural faculties (abhijña). The volumes contain both adiplomatic and a critical edition of the Sanskrit, an edition ofthe Tibetan by Jinamitra and Ye-shes-sde and of the Chineseby Xuanzang, an English translation, and a substantial intro-ductory study. This latter covers the context of the chapterwithin the larger corpus, the provenance of its various ver-sions, the textual formation of the Yogacarabhumi corpus, andits legacy in later Buddhist literature and thought. A Hamburgdoctoral dissertation that (after the European fashion) wassent straight to press, the book exhibits many shortcomingsof that genre—in particular, a tendency to obsessivelydocument every single claim or concept (featuring, e.g.,nearly 125 pages of annotations to merely twenty pages oftranslation). Yet, in the final analysis, it is an unmistakablyrich—if rather unwieldy—contribution to the study of thisfascinating literature.

Christian K. WedemeyerUniversity of Chicago

ZEN CLASSICS: FORMATIVE TEXTS IN THEHISTORY OF ZEN BUDDHISM. Edited by Steven Heineand Dale S. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press,2006. Pp. xii + 283. $38.00.

This collection, written by some of today’s key WesternZen scholars, is a welcome addition to Buddhist studies—although to the uninformed, where Zen is often viewed as a

religious way that eschews words and letters, this is hardlythe case. In his introduction to the volume, “The Concept ofClassic Literature in Zen Buddhism,” Wright observes thatthere is an immense Zen literature that conveys its “teach-ings and is perhaps the most important way that it extendsitself in future historical contexts.” The key point here is notto see Zen as some kind of timeless or universal religiousphenomenon; Zen is not only centrally concerned withimpermanence, but is itself a transitory and ever-changingtradition as it develops over time. Methodologically, theauthors are rigorously historical in the eight chapters, whichexamine key Chinese, Korean, and Japanese texts. Eachchapter focuses on a single work or literary genre that hashad a significant influence on the Zen tradition. These areclassics because of their “power or skill in evoking persua-sion or insight” that transcends the time in which they werecomposed. Each chapter attempts “to discover how each textor genre of texts came to be what it is, and how each influ-enced the tradition to take the shape that it did.” Particularlyinteresting chapters are A. Welter’s study of Eisai’s Kôzengokouron, an immensely important text that shaped themonastic Zen alliance with medieval Japanese rule; T. G.Foulk’s chapter on “ ‘Rules of Purity’ in Japanese Zen,” aseminal text that defined the nature of monastic life andpractice; and V. Hori’s intriguing chapter on Zen kôancapping phrase books, in which he argues that kôans origi-nated from ancient Chinese poetic tradition found in theBook of Songs, the Confucian Analects, and early Taoist texts.What was originally a kind of literary game becomes in Zena powerful new form of spiritual practice. As a well-editedvolume clearly organized around an important theme in Zenstudies, this collection is essential reading for anyone inter-ested in the current state of the art in Zen scholarship.

Mark MacWilliamsSt. Lawrence University

DÔGEN ON MEDITATION AND THINKING: AREFLECTION OF HIS VIEW OF ZEN. By Hee-Jin Kim.Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.Pp. xiii + 169. $22.95.

When Kim wrote his classic volume in 1975, DôgenKigen—Mystical Realist, he correctly noted that the system-atic study of Dôgen was almost nonexistent in the West.Now, over thirty years later, it flourishes and—as evidenceof this—we have Kim’s masterful reprise, a new interpreta-tion of Dôgen’s approach to language, thinking, and reason-ing in light of the most recent scholarship, intellectualcurrents within Zen, as well as our own situatedness asinterpreters who are caught in our “contemporary crisis.”Dôgen cannot be reduced to any simple stereotype as a Zenpractitioner and hermeneutist. Kim proves this by develop-ing a painstakingly nuanced philosophical terminology toparse Dôgen’s major treatises and poetry. He notes, forexample, that “mysticism,” when applied to him, has to beunderstood in a special sense—as a “mysticism of intimacyin the sense of interplay, not adhesion or union” as is it is

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