Abstract

CONTEMPORARY JAPAN 265 Kamigamo shrine in Kyoto was altered after the Pacific War, golf ‘courts’ (instead of ‘courses’)are mentioned twice (163). Using ‘worship’ without qualifying its cultural contexts (as well as its religious baggage) is also worth noting, as we find in the discussion (191) about religious leaders from Daoist, Christian, Hindu and other traditions who are said to have ‘collectively worshipped’ the sun goddess at Ise (during the interreligious conference held there in June 2014). The translation of furusato as ‘ancient village’ (184) is slightly at odds with the meaning of ‘rural nostalgia’ (via the index listing for furusato) which is more expansive and ambiguous than limiting the concept to a ‘village’.Asdiscussedearlier, ‘rural nostalgia’ evokes ‘idealizedhybridnature-culturelandscapes supposedly characteristicoftraditional Japan’ (Rots 39). Thus, while furusato includes a sentimen- talized village community it also incorporates landscapes, concepts of nature, and a longing for the past, all of which serve the ‘environmentalist paradigm’ of shrine Shintō today. These minor points aside, Shinto, Nature, and Ideology in Contemporary Japan provides the kind of thorough, fair, and at times sharply critical exposé of contentious issues pulsing through current shrine Shintō and Japanese nationalism. For this reader in particular, Rots’ engaging study clarified and