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Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in medieval Japan By James C. Dobbins. (Religion in Asia and Africa Series.) pp. xi, 242, front. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1989. U.S. $3500.

The author describes this work as a "companion" to the text, rather than a "commentary", using textual exegesis as a tool for a literary and poetic reconstruction. The difference is not entirely clear. In terms of modern critical theory, both companion and commentary could be regarded as complementary expositions of an " open work " (a la Umberto Eco). The existential phenomenology and hermeneutics employed by Kuang-ming Wu could then be considered as a contemporary commentary, "a transposition of [Chuang Tzu's] evocative intention into our contemporary world" (p. 391). Commentary and companion both form part of the same continuum. This companion is, then, more ambitious and personal than the author's lucid and confident study of Chuang Tzu, " World philosopher at play " (American Academy of Religion, Studies in Religion XXVI, 1982), though similarly absorbing and fun to read. It is worth noting the development in the author's thinking; for example, he compares the Chuang Tzu in this companion to a recipe rather than a blueprint, though this same image is criticised in his previous study. Though drawing on an extraordinary range of western thinkers, from the pre-Socratic philosophers to Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and including theologians and critical theorists, the book contains a critique of traditional interpretations of texts, which involve unhelpful distinctions between poetry, philosophy and religion. Chuang Tzu, it is argued, offers insights which include poetry, parody and philosophy, inextricably bound together, in a series of allusions and stories. These insights are meaningful only in a world of shared meanings, where the reader engages with the text. Chuang Tzu's lampooning of his contemporaries serves as a model for an engagement with today's problems, through the familiar "roaming and soaring". How this transition is to be effected, though, it is not always clear, and the author's struggle for clarity often ends up in frustrating and enigmatic rambling: "...Chuang Tzu did not propose any specific ism. He merely wanted to alert us toward living the polyphonic ambiguities in the polythetic self involved logicality of the universe" (p. 256). He defends this analysis by suggesting that his companion mirrors the stance of the Chuang Tzu's itself, in that the personal response of the "listener" or reader is the primary function in interpretation, rather than any " meaning " rooted in the text. As with the Chuang Tzu, literary ambivalence and ambiguity are essential components of the companion, avoiding both extremes of purely textual quibbles and false pontifications (p. 392). If its purpose is primarily transformative through existential evocation, the book has certainly succeeded in this reviewer's view.