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Japan's Golden Age: Momoyama by Money L. HickmanReview by: Karen L. BrockThe Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (May, 1997), pp. 501-503Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2646283.

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realistic, the sudden and the gradual, the localized and unlocalized, the rational andthe mythic. In this realm of polarities, the category of the double is a useful analyticaldevice, and Faure finds a profusion of doubles (p. 272) between Daigenshuri andDogen (p. 102), dream events and real happenings (p. 128), icons and gods (p. 134),Zen masters and their so-called portraits (chinso-)p. 172), mortal and immortal bodies(p. 204), and the disciple and his master (p. 260). This category, writes Faure,connects vastly different realities (p. 272), and Buddhist ritual does seem to be amachine for producing doubles for Zen masters about whom it can be asked: Is henot a double-faced being who plays a double game: a skeptic and a believer; anintellectual and a thaumaturge? (p. 273). Rather than dissolving these doublingsand tensions, the imaginaire ncompasses them.At times the imraginaireembraces China, India, the medieval Christian West, anda host of modern western theorists. This expansiveness, Faure notes, is necessaryinorder to break through narrow cultural boundaries (p. 274), and the result, or atleast an implication, of all of this interwoven material is that the irmaginaires moreuniversal than local, more shared than idiosyncratic. Sometimes Keizan himselfdisappears in this expanded imraginaire;in chapter 6, for instance, Keizan becomesalmost incidental in Faure'sfascinating treatment of funerary rites, the cult of relics,mummies, and ghosts. In discussing the field of ritual, Faure ranges from genericrituals and Zen masters to Helen Brunner's remarks in the Indian context and thework of Stanley Tambiah, and asks a question that can be posed at many placesthroughout this book: Where does Keizan stand in all this? (pp. 216-18). Fauremoves quickly and easily between medieval, modern, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, andWestern contexts, the boundaries and even identities of which are sometimes difficultto discern in this system of interconnected parts.Faureallows, as the subtitle of this book indicates, for the possibility that Keizanis a mental construct, a figment of my imagination (p. 287). The Keizan heconstructs, however, is quite supportable by the documents he cites, and needs onlyto be qualified by toning down Keizan's own struggle with the tensions andpolaritiesof the larger irnaginaire. he portraitof Keizan that emerges from the cited documentsfrom his own hand is that of a monk who is quite comfortablewith images and icons,and mostly unconcerned with emptiness and iconoclasm, matters that are introducedas tenets of Chan/Zen (p. 237) ratherthan of Keizan himself. What does seem tobe a possible mental construct is Keizan'sdreams or at least his recordof them, whichseems mostly to support, legitimize, and justify Keizan's lineage, teachings, andactions. While Faure expresses some suspicion about the authenticity of Keizan'sdreams, he finally concludes that it is impossible to affirm or deny the existence ofhis dream experiences (p. 142). This conclusion, however, comes after his analysisofdreams,which he treats as if they did exist, and he does not entertain the possibilitythat Keizan's largely self-serving record is a literary production composedof imagineddreams.With its treatment of double visions and extended imaginations, VisionsofPowerprovidesan effective model for capturing complexities that can be understoodin otherthan uniquely autochthonousways.

GEORGE J. TANABE, JR.University of HawaiiJapan's Golden Age: Momoyama. By MONEY L. HICKMAN et al. New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996. 320 pp. $60.00 (cloth).A pair of mythical Chinese lions framed in gold leaf stride across the cover of thislavish coffee-table volume, the catalogue of a self-described blockbuster exhibition

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held at the Dallas Museum of Art in fall, 1996. As the centerpieceof a 100-day-longfestival, Sun & Star 1996, this major effort in cultural exchange between Japan( Rising Sun ) and Texas ( Lone Star ) served a multiplicity of cultural, political,and economic agendas.A catalogue review should not be an exhibition review, yet every aspect of thisvolume was predetermined by its original function and identity. As a joint productionbetween Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs, guest curatorMoney L. Hickman, anda team of seven American scholars, this volume predictably follows the format andselection of objects found in severalprevious catalogues, most notably one edited byYoshiaki Shimizu, entitled Japan: The Shaping of Dairnyo Culture, 1185-1868(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1988). A lengthy narrativeessay byHickman precedes the catalogue proper, in which 162 entries are divided into ninecategories: portraiture, sculpture, painting, calligraphy, tea ceremonial utensils andceramics, lacquer and metalwork, arms and armor, textiles, and noh masks.Hickman begins his essay with an explanation of Momoyama as the span ofabout four decades from 1575 to 1615, a 'golden age' of short duration butmemorable accomplishments, and the watershed between the medieval and earlymodernperiods inJapan (p. 20). ForHickman (asformany writers)the age is definedby its warlordunifiers, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu,whose aspirations he defines as power, wealth, and pleasure with gold as themesmericmaterial that held out promise of the realizationof these ideals (p. 21).Hickman then discusses the mining, trading, and accumulation of gold and silver asan epitomizing aspect of this short period. In the exhibition business gold sells,and the theme of wealth and grandiose ambitions permeatesHickman's presentation.Hideyoshi is clearly the hero, and Hickman focuses in particularon his battles, hisostentatious outings, and his building projects in Kyoto. Colorphotographsof extantbuildings andof objects not included in the exhibition providea semblance of context.While the city of Kyoto figures prominently in the essay and in the entries thatfollow, Hickman's gaze remains focused on castle towers.The individual catalogue entries provide a much richer view of the arts of theperiod and of women and men active in and out of Kyoto well into the seventeenthcentury. Due to the fact that numerous Momoyama and Hideyoshi exhibitions wereheld in Japan in 1995 and 1996 (a tie-in with NHK's year-long Hideyoshi drama),the exhibition/catalogue does not actually include much that can be directly tied toHideyoshi and his family. At least one-fourth of the objects in this catalogue haveappearedin previous U.S. exhibitions, an insignificant overlap for an exhibition in anew venue. From the viewpoint of a catalogue reader,however,many entries reproducethe facts, descriptions, or points of view found in earlier catalogues. Annotations toindividual entries, a new and welcome addition here, range from references to otherEnglish-language catalogues (the most numerous) to scholarly articles and volumesin Japanese. Paintings, largely portraits and screens, account for one-third of thelengthy and descriptive entries.

The large size of the exhibition and this catalogue resulted, in part, from thepractical need to rotate objects with duplicate examples: two portraits each ofToyotomi Hideyoshi (nos. 6, 7) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (nos. 11, 12), two pairs of horsevotive paintings (ema,nos. 35 and 36), two pairs of horse stable screens(nos. 37 and38) and so on. Catalogues such as this are frequently written without significantconsultation among the authors or hands-on access to the objects themselves. Indeed,often the final object list remains unsettled right up to press time. As a result theediting and proofreading of the text suffers, and time may not permit verifying the


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color or placement of the photographs. An alert readerwill notice such lapses in thisvolume.KAREN L. BROCKWashingtonUniversity,Saint Louis

Rituals of Self-Revelation:Shish5setsuas Literary Genre and Socio-CulturalPhenomenon.By IRMELA HIJIYA-KIRSCHMEREIT. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1996. xxiv, 373 pp. $42.00 (paper).

Shishosetsu is difficult to define and use with consistency. Though it seems todenote a first-person, loosely autobiographical narrative, the range of works to whichthe term is applied suggests a wide semantic field that resists simple categorization.Given the sheer number of shishJsetsu, variant understandings of its formalcharacteristics are inevitable and potentially confusing. Even so, I am not convincedthat the lack of a standard definition is, by itself, an especially interesting criticalproblem. The fluidity of usage is instead better understood as a marker of theexperimental tendency of modern prose narratives and of the highly contestedunderstandings of cultural identity in Japan.

This take on the historical significance of shishofetsu s at odds with the underlyingaim of Rituals of Self-Revelation, which is relentlessly determined to purgeterminological amorphousness. The book was first published in Germany in 1981,and in preparing this translation the author decided against making significantchanges to her project. This is unfortunate. Not only does the book need editing toconstruct a coherent argument, but other studies published since 1981 make itsanalysis seem dated.

The lack of connections among the fragmentary elements of the argument is bestindicated by the author's persistent strategy of deferral. I lost track of the number oftimes the book promises to fill out a discussion in a later chapter, or excuses the lackof necessary amplification or qualifications on the grounds of space limitations, orsends its readers to empty footnotes that assure them the point is proven in someother piece. These are not infelicities of style, but go to the substance of the argument.Complex historical problems get treated in a superficial manner that too often relieson a hodgepodge of essentialist assertions about cultural archetypes; references totraditional literary forms remain undeveloped and their importance to shish5sets;largely unproved; and the rigid divisions between critical taxonomy and textualexplication leads to an abstract analysis that, when brought to bear on specific texts,creates the effect of pounding square pegs into round holes.

The fragmentary, hurried quality of the analysis gives rise to conclusions that arenot always as foregone as presented. For example, the author takes to task Japanesecritics whose method of reading shishJsetsu consists of ferreting out biographicalfactoids. Since the author also relies on synopses and biographical details for her ownreadings, this critique is a little unfair. It is also off the mark. According to the author,the defining characteristic of the genre is the dialectical relationship between elementsof factuality and the focus figure. While it is difficult to see how this definitionmeaningfully extends earlier usage, it follows that if what defines shishJsetsuas a genreis a tacit agreement between author and reader concerning the factuality of the text,then critics have no choice but to concentrate on biographical detail. Without thatagreement the techniques of shishJsetsu are effectively indistinguishable from those of


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