| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Sarah Thal. Rearranging the Landscape of the Gods: The Politics of a Pilgrimage Site in Japan, 1573–1912. (Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 409. $22.50.

All students of Japanese history are familiar with the interplay of politics and religion during the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth and seventh centuries a.d . and the forced separation of Buddhism and Shinto in the late-nineteenth century. What this fascinating, elegantly written and generously illustrated study by Sarah Thal illumines, however, is the manner in which the gods—both Shinto and Buddhist—at a single site, Mt. Zōzu (now known as Mt. Kotohira) on Shikoku island, were continually subject through the centuries to political manipulation. While adding to the small body of studies of individual religious institutions in Japan, this book is most distinguished by its broad chronological sweep (many such studies are contained within a single historical period) and its focus on both the state and religion as well as the political and institutional contexts of religion. It is also the first monographic study of Mt. Zōzu in the English language. Mt. Zōzu first gained attention across Japan from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries as the site of Konpira Daigongen, a miracle-working deity that at the height of its popularity in the nineteenth century attracted hundreds of thousands of faithful. It became one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in Japan at the time, often being compared by writers to Ise shrine.

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