Helen Hardacre's new book on the history of Shinto opens with a definition of Shinto which, by the author's own admission, departs from that adopted by previous studies (pp. 1–2, 18). Scholars and students of Japanese religions familiar with recent trends in the field will recognize that most such studies in Western languages had focused primarily (with some notable exceptions in German) on the histories of Shinto shrines and lineages or temple-shrine complexes and traced their development, ritual life, and religious significance in local and transregional contexts, during specific historical periods. Up to this moment, the field has continued to search for a flexible, historically rooted, and sufficiently sharp definition of Shinto, Japan's polymorphous tradition which includes multiple forms of worship of indigenous and adopted deities. Hardacre, a scholar already well-known for her superb and now classic works on this subject, offers a large-scale detailed analysis of historical developments in Japanese kami worship, while keeping firm track of its multiple and constantly evolving elements. Noting that kami worship has been present in Japan since prehistoric times, the author adopts the modern term “Shinto” to analyse this form of religiosity in all periods of Japanese history, from early and up to the present times, with a special focus on “the history of an ideal of Shinto that has structured its internal debates, social roles, and politics” (p. 2, italics mine). In short, she describes this ideal as something which can be traced to prehistoric times and privileging the figure of a “divinely descended” ruler governing the land through his worship of Japanese deities, kami, and institutions dedicated to them, primarily, the Jingikan (the Council of Divinities, a bureau of kami worship within the Japanese royal court's government). Throughout its sixteen chapters, the volume thus traces the emergence and further ebbs and flows of this ideal of a realm united in worship of kami under a divine ruler's watch, along with its many constituent elements. Although the aforementioned Jingikan had subsequently disappeared during several spans of Japanese history, for Hardacre, it is important to emphasize that Shinto has its institutional origins in the so-called Ritsuryō legal codes adopted to Japan's own system of government from Tang China in the mid-seventh to eighth centuries. The volume analyses various forms of institutional organization of kami worship, both public and centralized, or private and localized, and how these structures or their reconfigurations supported or affected the multiple historical guises of Shinto. To this end, the author adopts an analytical framework (however, none too rigid) which hinges on two primary juxtapositions.

The first is, as Hardacre puts it, one of Shinto's most enduring pieces of rhetoric: that is, the tradition's own vision of itself as “indigenous” in relation to “foreign” (p. 5). In doing so, the author is careful not to invite any impressions that Shinto indeed is a purely indigenous, or anyhow monolithic, entity. Hardacre's study clearly shows that since prehistoric times, what came to be described and worshipped as Japanese kami tends to have long transcultural itineraries: some deities arrived in Japan as a result of large-scale waves of early migration from the continent, others departed it to become part of immigrant communal life or colonial efforts in East Asia and elsewhere around the globe.

The second juxtaposition emerges from Shinto's organizational history as a result of constant interplay between the “public” and “private” interests, be they institutional, economic, or political. Hardacre's study highlights a persevering “assertion that [Japanese] shrines and their rituals are or should be ‘public’ in character”, and that “shrine rites are necessary to the emperor and governance, [even though this] assertion assumed various forms and nuances at different times” (p. 5). This important rationale allows the book to methodically sift through a truly kaleidoscopic range of respective historical claims on the Shinto ideal placed by a plethora of socially and politically prominent or non-elite figures, institutions, donors, and practitioners. Of these claims, we learn a tremendous amount through meticulously researched historic and contemporary economic records, personal diaries, political narratives, and newspaper reports. One of the many advantages of this study is that, due to its reliance on sound methodology in social studies, it brings to the fore the historical fluctuations of Shinto shrines' public and private funding.

Although the present volume reaches out to many corners of Japan's history, the scholars of medieval Shinto, a field of research that has recently experienced a particular flourishing, may have further questions. One, for example, could be about the roles of Jihen, a Tendai Buddhist monk (p. 218), or Ryōyo Shōgei, a Pure Land Buddhist priest-scholar (not mentioned), who made significant but still critically overlooked contributions to the formulations and study of the aforementioned and supposedly vital Shinto ideal. Another brief but significant clarification would be due on the vital role of non-elite Buddhist practitioners based at Buddhist temples near Mt. Miwa in the construction of local forms of medieval kami worship; due to paucity of medieval sources there is little evidence that the Ōmiwa shrine lineage was involved in esoteric initiations as per the current study's description; it is hard to confirm that the medieval jingi kanjō initiations from Miwa tradition followed exactly the formats seen in the heterogeneous documents bearing Miwa lineage's name and copied much later (pp. 161–3). Scholars in other fields may also wish to question Hardacre's definition of Daoism in Japanese context. However, if it were to happen, a clarification of these omissions may potentially lead to a renewed emphasis on the Buddhist components of Shinto thought and practice in premodern Japan.

These small observations aside, the sheer scope and reach of Helen Hardacre's new history of Shinto is rather unprecedented. Given its astonishing amount of detail, wide-ranging translations of well-known and new primary sources and personal testimonies, modern statistics and interesting illustrations, this 700-page volume will surely deserve both a long-term scholarly regard and a valuable use in class.