Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Carl Bielefeldt

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 173-175
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2058493 .
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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