A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan.

A COMPANION TO THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF JAPAN. Edited by Jennifer Robertson. Malden (Massachusetts), Oxford (UK), Victoria (Australia): Blackwell Publishing. 2005. xxiii, 518 pp. (Tables.) US$124.95, cloth. ISBN 0-631-22955-8.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Japan is a unique compilation that provides a broad survey of certain elements within the field of Japan studies as well as the latest findings in particular specialties. While the majority of the essays are from cultural anthropologists, there are also contributions from scholars in sociology, film studies, religious studies and history. Focusing mostly on questions of contemporary Japanese identity, history and socialization, the Companion is a groundbreaking collection that will find itself a ready home among those who are interested in postwar Japanese society.

Each of the 28 chapters of this 500-page collection was assigned to a leading or emerging researcher in that area. The editor organized the papers under five broad rubrics: 1) cultures, histories and identities; 2) geographies and boundaries, spaces and sentiments; 3) socialization, assimilation and identification; 4) body, blood, self and nation; 5) religion and science, beliefs and bioethics. This organizational schema reveals that the Companion was not designed as a comprehensive textbook on Japan but as a mechanism to indicate the current state of the discipline in particular areas.

There are quite a number of excellent essays that bear special mention. The first set of readings helps to establish the field of Japan anthropology as well as the discourse on nihonjinron or unique Japaneseness, a theme that reverberates through the book. Katsumi Nakao explains that the Japanese Society of Ethnology retained its anachronistic name to prevent a historical amnesia forming around the relation between prewar Japanese anthropology and the imperial ambitions in Southeast Asia. Roger Goodman then articulates a broad historical overview of the discourse of nihonjinron, starting in the Meiji period and what he calls the "making of majority culture," which is supported by Glenda Robert's following chapter on the construction of middle-class egalitarianism through gendered lenses. With the overwhelming emphasis in this section on the mainstream, Joshua Hotaka Roth and Sonia Ryang present the only chapters that discuss ethnic minorities in Japan in any detail.

Turning to spatial geographies, Scott Schnell's essay on the "Rural Imaginary: Landscape, Village, and Tradition" is particularly cogent, forcing us to reconceptualize the rural as also including mountainous regions, dislocating the central privileging of rice paddies in the Japanese agrarian imagination. In the next section on socialization, Eyal Ben-Ari and Brian McVeigh provide excellent overviews of Japanese education from kindergarten to secondary and tertiary education, while other scholars focus on play, popular entertainment and manga. In the penultimate section on "Body, Blood, Self, and Nation," Emiko Ochiai's chapter on the ie family system works well in conversation with Glenda Robert's earlier chapter on gender and the middle class. The last section of the volume deals with religion, with Ian Reader talking about New-New religions and Noriko Kawahashi comparing this with folk religions. Concluding the volume, Margaret Lock discusses biomedicine and morality with a moving essay on brain death, terminal care and organ transplants.

Unlike many other edited volumes, the quality of scholarship is consistently high and the lack of reprinted material is refreshing. Although there are thematic threads, most readers will likely focus on the chapters that are of particular interest to them. Aiding this effort is an excellent synopsis of contents in the front of the book that points out the salient issues of each chapter, as well as a comprehensive index. Most of the chapters have "Suggested Reading" lists that supplement the bibliographic references, opening the door to further exploration. This makes the chapters particularly useful in a classroom context, although the high cost of this volume makes it difficult to assign in toto.

KAREN NAKAMURA

Yale University, New Haven, CT, U.S.A.