From: The Historian | Date: September 22, 1998| Author: | COPYRIGHT 1998 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine. By John K. Nelson. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 286. $17.50.)

This work is occasionally charming as well as undeniably deeply disturbing. While this story is presented as a tale of a year's events at the Suwa Shrine at Nagasaki, exactly which year is never made clear, demonstrating a naive sense that in the eternal present of Shinto ritual and ceremony, history does not really matter all that much. The story traces the Shrine's seasonal festival calendar in a manner suggesting, but never quite ...