Albany, ny: suny Press, 2007. x + 231 pp. Hardcover, $74.50. isbn 10: 0-7914-7021-0; isbn 13: 978-0-7914-7021-3; Paper, $25.95. isbn 10: 0-7914-7022-9; isbn 13: 978-0-7914-7022-0.
關鍵詞
Monk; Shinran’s Buddhism
摘要
This extremely well-nourished work of scholarship (drawing on eighty-five primary texts in Japanese and one hundred and sixty-eight secondary ones) offers a flood of information on Prince Shōtoku (574–622) and the vast growth of his legend and cult in medieval Japan. Lee claims that Westerners implicitly regard this tradition as “a long web of exaggerated lies,” thus failing to appreciate “the mystery and mystique that surround not only the emperor … but also the Japanese people as a whole” (35). Yet Lee himself goes on to puncture this mystique by embracing ?yama Seiichi’s theory that Shōtoku never existed, and is even ready to entertain the idea that this “fictitious character” was “the focal point of a mass conspiracy that has captured and paralyzed the Japanese people” (135). Or rather he seems to say that history is irrelevant and that a legend of this order takes on a life and momentum of its own which does credit to the creativity of its inventors...
