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The Way of Shikishima: Waka Theory and Practice in Early Modern Japan (review)

clerical worshippers,” we are faced with the methodological problem of the book under review. Another limitation of the book is Horton’s exclusive focus on the “living” nature of Buddhist images, together with her simplified way of addressing this issue. As is well known, Buddhism has a long history of interpreting the nature and function of sacred images in different ways, from regarding such images as pointers to a higher reality, as elements in an iconographic repertory, or as ritual foci, all the way to seeing them as animated beings (including the idea that they are “doubles” of their spiritual models). Exclusive focus on animation, as in this book, reduces the intellectual and ritual richness of the Buddhist tradition. Moreover, the fact that people talk about icons in (almost) human terms does not need to be taken literally; in fact, humanization is a common rhetorical strategy (applied to all sorts of objects and entities, from toys to cars to the stock market) and does not necessarily imply animistic beliefs on the part of the speaker. The author, however, takes a strong literalist perspective, especially when she writes repeatedly that statue X “lives” in temple Y. That a statue “lives” in a temple sounds odd both in English and in Japanese (the equivalent Japanese expressions would be sunde iru, kurashite iru, or ikite iru; all of these would strike most Japanese speakers as strange). And when ritual uses of images go beyond rhetoric, such as in cases of ritual humiliation or mistreatment of icons (as described by Ishizuka Masahide, among others),1 it is necessary to distinguish between animism (or animatism) and fetishism. The latter, I believe, might be more important in interactions with sacred images in Japan than we usually think. Although I have reservations on these points, the book’s emphasis on contemporary practices and attitudes, its focus on some of the little-studied texts that underlie these things, and its attention to a wide range of icons are fresh and welcome approaches; the medieval rituals and the miraculous stories Horton presents about Buddhist images are valuable documents. The book is most certainly appropriate for undergraduate classes on Buddhist art, ritual, and Japanese religiosity in general. Monumenta Nipponica 65:1 (2010) 208