REVIEWS

This collection of essays exhibits the high standards attained by American scholars of Japanese culture. It also carries forward an effort to bring literary studies into a mutually challenging dialogue with art history and with the his tory of Buddhism (though as the essays seem to have been written several years ago, the book may not quite represent the “cutting edge”). William R. LaFleur,s book, The Karma of Words (1983) is the path-breaking work in this interdisciplinary venture. The extract from it published here presents the theoretical basis for his claim that Japanese art and literature, far from being mere ornaments of Buddhism, constitute a primary source for the study of the religion. LaFleur draws not only on the Lotus Sutra as understood in T，ien-t，ai speculation and its extensions in the aesthetics of Fujiwara Shunzei (1114-1204), but also on present-day philosophy and its extensions in liter ary criticism. His essay is centered on the following passage from Shunzei, who was concerned to counter a puritanical dismissal of poetry as irrelevant to the religious quest