The Religious Traditions of Japan, 500–1600 (review)

Richard Bowring made his professional name as a translator and interpreter of Japanese literature, first with Mori Ōgai and the Modernization of Japanese Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1979) and then with Murasaki Shikibu, Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs (Princeton University Press, 1982). Later, he served as the co-editor of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Japan (Cambridge University Press, 1993). In his latest work, which he calls a product of mid-career retooling, he turns his attention to the history of Japanese religions up to the sixteenth century. The result is an over-priced and underwhelming book.

In his preface, Bowring frankly confesses, [“In my study of medieval Japanese literature,] I found myself handicapped by my ignorance of Japanese Buddhism” (xi). This is not surprising. No one can appreciate most works of medieval Japanese literature in any depth without at least a basic appreciation of Japanese Buddhist cosmology, epistemology, religious concepts, diverse ritual practices, and religio-aesthetics, to name but a few relevant topics. Bowring reports, though, that he found the available Western language surveys of Japanese religious history to be dated and otherwise inadequate. “There is certainly room for a wide-ranging history of Japanese religion as a whole,” he tells his reader, “and that is what now lies before you” (xi). While Bowring’s study may be “wide-ranging” in terms of chronology, regrettably it is not a “history of Japanese religion as a whole.”

Bowring’s work is an old-fashioned intellectual and institutional history. As such, it does not address in a serious or sustained manner the major issues listed above. Despite its problems, William LaFleur’s The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (University of California Press, 1983) remains a much better guide for Western-language readers of medieval literature. It is difficult to see how Bowring’s study will really help students of Japanese literature or religion to gain a deeper appreciation of these subjects. Bowring’s history is idiosyncratic and very uneven in its treatment of subjects. Perhaps most troubling, though, Bowring relies almost exclusively on Western-language scholarship. Not only does he not utilize Japanese scholarship, he refuses to introduce his readers to any issues of contention among historians. Instead, Bowring’s history of Japanese religions is a largely unproblematic linear tale of Buddhist institutions and elites rising and falling over the centuries.

Bowring is unapologetic about the nature of the work he has produced. “Readers with some knowledge of the subjects being treated will undoubtedly find favorite topics treated too lightly or not at all. This is in the nature of the exercise and cannot be helped” (xii–xiii). To be sure, no survey could possibly treat every subject, let alone treat most subjects in depth. Thus, a critic who quibbled over the absence of some minor subject or another might rightly be dismissed in this way. Still, one must ask whether the author of a historical

Bowring is unapologetic about the nature of the work he has produced. “Readers with some knowledge of the subjects being treated will undoubtedly find favorite topics treated too lightly or not at all. This is in the nature of the exercise and cannot be helped” (xii–xiii). To be sure, no survey could possibly treat every subject, let alone treat most subjects in depth. Thus, a critic who quibbled over the absence of some minor subject or another might rightly be dismissed in this way. Still, one must ask whether the author of a historical survey does not have a professional responsibility to generalize with care? Most readers of surveys have little or no knowledge of the subject matter and, thus, rely on the author for judicious summaries of complex issues. Bowring all too often fails such readers. For example, he writes, “Buddhism remained in the hands of the elite until the twelfth century … It was, to all intents and purposes, the preserve of the aristocracy” (7). Yet, it is only Bowring’s failure to...