Book Review

Asia

Mikael S. Adolphson provides us with a detailed analysis of the relationships among aristocrats, temples, and the emerging warrior class in Japan from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. Employing a modified form of Kuroda Toshio's kenmon ("Gates of Power") thesis, from which this work takes its title, the author introduces readers to the ways in which religious institutions complemented and competed with the gradually receding authority of the court aristocracy and the emerging authority of the warriors. Adolphson addresses a fundamental omission in our studies of medieval Japanese history: the degree to which the flowering of samurai influence replaced or complemented aristocratic rule in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries has been the subject of sometimes heated discussion in the English literature, but regardless of which position one examines, the role of religious institutions is strikingly underplayed.

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Two fundamental problems result from this long-standing tendency. The first, which Adolphson notes, lies in the failure to provide political and social context for the development of religion in Japan, especially the development of particular religious organizations. The second, which he addresses in part here, is the role of religion in society and politics. His work gives us a clear view of how religious organizations functioned as political actors, but he is not primarily concerned with how religious ideas and faith functioned in society or politics more generally. (Adolphson had enough to write about in the contexts he does address, but the other dimensions constitute a significant deficit in premodern Japanese historical studies that needs to be addressed more fully.)

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