Hawaii Books

This is the greatest book. The Chaplain who lived this experience was very brave, caring and brilliant.

When my aunt told me about this book being published, I found and purchased it. The author, Monica Yost, was a high school classmate and friend of mine who I had lost touch with over the years. I started reading the last part of the book first about his family and now have a deeper respect for this Combat Chaplain and admiration for Monica for publishing this labor of love. I plan to read the entire book in the near future. My best wishes go to the whole family whom were blessed with his presence and guidance.

I purchased the book for my mom. Pastor Yost was the pastor at the church where she grew up and he confirmed her. She is enjoying the book very much.

Our present day army has only a relatively few divisions when compared to the 99 divisions it had at the end of World War II. As it has gotten deactivated divisions, it has retained the divisions that hold the highest honor. The 1st Division and the 29th Division went into Omaha on D-Day; they are still Army divisions.

The 100th Battalion of the 442 still exists.

The 100th entered combat with 1,432 men. Its nickname was 'Go For Broke.' It alsoearned the nickname 'Purple Heart Battalion' as it was depleted down to 521 men by 1944.

This book is by the chaplain of the 100th. It is based on letters that he wrote home, the journal he kept while in Europe and comments from members of his family and of the 100th. It was put together by Rev. Yost and was been prepared for more formal publication by his daughter after his death. It's a very worthwhile book, presenting an entirely different view that that usually seen by soldiers or commanders.

If you can read the appendix, which is a memorial speech he gave at a reunion of the 100th without tearing up, you have no soul.

To go with this book, I recommend the old Van Johnson movie 'Go For Broke.'

In advance of my trip to Maui and Kauai, I felt like I needed a primer to help me understand the forces that shaped the islands' geography, biology, and culture. I had little expectation for this 88 pps book, but I bought it because it seemed the only reasonable choice available, and the title was exactly what I sought. When the book arrived I saw that it came from what appeared to be a cheesy vanity press... but I opened it up and was absolutely riveted from the first paragraph on. This is well-written, logically organized... an organic and concise telling of the history of the Hawaiian Islands, from volacanic formation to bio-diversity to the voyages of Melanesians and Tahitians who first came to these islands just 1500 years ago. I could not recommend this book heartily enough. It's great!

Last month in Waikiki, I bought this book together with some souvenirs at the famous ABC store.
Yes,You can find it easily.
It was the last day of my visit to Hawaii this time.
But,now I deeply regret not having read this book before I go to Hawaii!
If I read it prior to this travel,I am sure I could have enjoyed experiencing these magical islands more,feeling interested in its history.
I would like to recommend this book to all people planning to visit Hawaii.

A concise History of the Hawaiian Islands by Dr. Phil Barnes is excellent. This is the perfect primer for anyone visiting the islands and wanting to know more about the land the history of the people and islands they visit. I got this book upon my arrival in Oahu and read it in a single evening. It sucks you end and gives you so much info in so few pages. This book explains the islands and how they are formed. Then quickly moves into the origins and migrations of the Marquesas and Tahitian settler's. This is a fascinating basis understanding the Hawaiian culture. Then the Europeans arrive and all changes. Bring in the Gun, Missionaries and finally industry which lead to sugarcane and pineapples. This of course brings imported labor in the form of Chinese, Japanese, Philippine and even Portuguese. Then all the tourism and American influence. Just an amazing yet tragic history of a culture and nation that rose slowly and fell quickly in the British and American land grab of colonies. All leads to the amazing State of Hawaii of today. Part of me gets a patriotic since from this book and justification for some independence of the Hawaiian Nation or at least the people.

Besides being some of the most informative and thought provoking 82 pages I have ever read it definitely helps me understand Hawaii and have a better respect for the land and people. A must have book for any visitor past or future to Hawaii.

I lived in the Hawaiian Islands for several years and was aware of a lot of the history and issues. This book really gets to the core of the important things quickly without much elaboration, and is very readable. It would be great reading for anyone planning to go there even for vacation - doesn't take long to read and hits all the important stuff. Doesn't gloss over the controversial issues.

This is a tremendous book that will certainly dominate my coffee table for years to come. It might be useful when referring to various species (e.g. when buying mail-order) but it does not contain any aquarium care information- a task that is best left in another volume. If you are interested in the subject, however, I highly recommend this book.

This is the greatest coral book ever written! It is a masterpiece and includes some of the best underwater coral photography ever published. It is mostly a pretty version of Dr. Veron's 5 vol scientific journals, and is a little hard to see it's true use in the reef keeping hobby, because it talks about corals strictly out on the wild reef, but if you take the requirements of the animal in the wild and apply it to your home aquarium you can not fail. This book is also the best for identifing all of those mystery stony corals you have in your tank. There is not one stony coral on the reef that this book does not discuss. If you have stony corals or plan to have them in the future then this book is a must have on your list. The price tag is a little high I know, but worth every cent. The great pictures alone make it a great coffee table book and worth the price right there,if you love corals don't pass this book up!

Corals of Australia and Indo-Pacific is the ultimate resource for stony (SPS) Corals I have found to date. I am a reef aquarium hobbiest and I use Verons book almost exclusively to identify species of aquarium coral. The book is also extremely helpful in requard to the taxonomy of the SPS.

Corals of Australia and the Indo-Pacific is by far the best reference for coral reference on the market today. This book is for the serious Reef Aquarium Hobbiest or Marine Biologist. While this book does not give reference to aquarium conditions, it does provide the reader with a comprehensive review of the major SPS corals not given in any other puiblication that I have found. If you are are an SPS reef aquarium hobbiest. You need this book

We purchased this book after eating at Sansei in Maui and Oahu our first time to Hawaii and love the book. If you have never eaten at Sansei you are really missing out. Chef DK has created an amazing menu. Everything is delicious. If you are heading to Maui or Oahu, make sure you put Sansei down as a "to-do" while you are there. On Sunday and Monday night they open at 5PM and everything on the menu is 50% off for one hour. You have to get their by 4PM or so in order to get in, but it is well worth the wait.

Chef Kodama and Bonnie Friedman share all of Chef Kodama's secrets and do a great job illustrating how to create traditional and contemporary Japanese cuisine. They explain how and why each ingredient is used and translate ingredients throughout the book so you don't have to keep looking up terms when trying a new recipe. The book is simple enough for beginners to follow, yet offers some contemporary (and slightly more complex) dishes for the advanced chef.

If you love sushi and want to start making it at home, by this book.

I've been to his restaurant in Maui and the food was fabulous. So good in fact that I bought this book. While I could use more examples of fish to swap for things only a Hawaiian can get I find the recipes so easy a beginner can use them to make some fantastic food. I highly recommend this book.

For beginners, there's a nice introduction to different basic japanese foods and rolling techniques with pictures. There are recipes for sushi, and small and large entrees. I've been to one of the two Sansei restaurants on Maui and the recipes from this book definately cover some of the best things on their menu. The only minor change I could see to make it better is more information about using pre-made grocery store sauces instead of making everything from scratch.

Loved the ease of instruction in making sushi. Not hard to follow, well done. Also like the homespun family history. It is a great guide to not only sushi but everthing else in his style. A lot of fun.

This is truly a stunning collection of Lu Xun's works. The translation is an easy read and entertaining. Professors seeking revolutionary period text for use in the classroom will be extremely satisfied.

Lu Xun (1881-1936) was not the greatest writer produced by a certain time, or city, or nation. He was one of the greatest authors this world has ever produced. Period.

This book begins with an overview of the man's life and works. I read its long preface, something I rarely do with a career retrospective, and enjoyed it. Lu Xun lived his life. He was not lived by it.

The meat of the book comes from his short stories, prose poems and reminiscences. The only way to tell his fiction from his non-fiction is by the name of the narrator, and even then you don't really know. Lu Xun is that good.

I was immediately stunned by his turn of phrase, his utterly realistic portrayal of life, his unflinching honesty, his gentle wit. His mind, his heart, his soul. Here in his hometown, 100 years too late. I am so grateful that he wrote, because otherwise I would have never known him.

"As to why I wrote [stories], I still felt...that I should write in the hope of enlightening my people, for humanity, and of the need to better it.... My aim was to expose the disease and draw attention to it so that it might be cured."

Just a few of his early words. I also admire how he openly states that he set out to use his words as "daggers" and "javelins." Here are more of his words.

"I did my best to avoid all wordiness. If I felt I had made my meaning sufficiently clear, I was glad to dispense with frills. The old Chinese theatre has no scenery, and the New Year pictures sold to children show a few main pictures only.... Convinced that such methods suit my purpose, I did not indulge in irrelevant details and kept the dialogue down to a minimum."

Let me pause here. Lu Xun knows how to show rather than tell. But dialogue that does neither doesn't exist in his writing. That's what he means by "a minimum." His dialogue rings so true that I'm sick with jealousy, and there's an ample supply.

"I forget who it was that said that the best way to convey a man's character with a minimum of strokes is to draw his eyes. This is absolutely correct. If you draw all the hairs of his head, no matter how accurately, it will not be of much use."

The best authors have always known this. But look at how well Lu Xun explains it. I could copy and paste what he wrote about writing, pass myself off as an expert, and get rich. Let me return to his words.

"After finishing something, I always read it through twice, and where a passage grated on my ears I would add or cut a few words to make it read smoothly. When I could not find suitable vernacular expressions I used classical ones, hoping some readers would understand. And I seldom used phrases out of my own head which I alone -- or not even I -- could comprehend."

I graduated high school, in Tampa, Florida, in 1981. I was taught that simple language is bad, which we now seem to accept isn't true. In China, roughly 70 years before that, Lu Xun defended the use of words that readers actually understand. Modern China and modern USA could both learn from him on this. The goal of communication is to communicate. It really bugs me that I feel a definite need to state this.

"Truth is the life of satire. Unless you write the truth it cannot be 'satire.'" But satire must be good-intentioned. Lu Xun opposed the cynicism which "simply convinces its readers that there is nothing good in the world, nothing worth doing."

I learned all this, and was convinced I'd love his writing, before I even read the first word. Look at the intelligence, the perceptiveness, the passion, the clarity. All this from the preface alone. Before I move on to a preface written by the master himself, let me throw in some historical perspective.

The Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing Dynasty, but it didn't erase the imperialism and feudalism. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Lu Xun saw this. He shows us life as it was then. But please don't think of him as a "political author," the way the preface by a loyal Communist Party member encourages you to do. To reduce Lu Xun to those two words would be a terrible injustice.

Lu Xun left Shaoxing when he was 17, to study medicine. His father's death was due to medical incompetence. Lu Xun studied medicine at the Kiangnan Naval Academy in Nanjing, then at a medical college in the Japanese countryside. This background exposed him to the world, whereas most Chinese at that time knew only their little corner of China. But let me use his words again.

"...one day I saw a news-reel slide of a number of Chinese, one of them bound and the rest standing around him. They were all sturdy fellows but appeared completely apathetic. According to the commentary, the one with his hands bound was a spy working for the Russians who was to be beheaded by the Japanese military as a warning to others, while the Chinese beside him had come to enjoy the spectacle.

"Before the term was over I had left for Tokyo, because this slide convinced me that medical science was not so important after all. The people of a weak and backward country, however strong and healthy they might be, could only serve to be made examples of or as witnesses of such futile spectacles; and it was not necessarily deplorable if many of them died of illness. The most important thing, therefore, was to change their spirit..."

That's from the preface of the man's first book. Lu Xun, brand new author, states that it's okay if Chinese people die because they are sheep, and that's why he left medicine. He challenges his readers with this before they've ever read his first story. Then he presumably expects those readers to read his stories anyway.

Based on the Western stereotype of China, this is what makes authors vanish without a trace. According to some people, this is what makes authors in Bush's America vanish without a trace. But what matters is that Lu Xun never lied to a reader. That's what he felt, so that's what he wrote.

Have you read a short story collection where you raced to see how fast you could knock it out? Here a story, there a story, everywhere a story story, and two hours later you're done. An hour later, you're hungry again. That's what's hurt the popularity of the short story. Writing them is easy!

No, it's not. Not if you do it right. The well crafted short story is harder to write than a novel. Every time I read a Lu Xun short story, it ended far too soon and I had to pause while my mind caught up with what it had just witnessed. He is truly a master, and I can't recommend him highly enough.

Back to the preface before Lu Xun's preface. "Lu Xun's essays form the bulk and the most important part of his literary work." In addition to his teaching and his editing. Amazing. I've spent the past two weeks being blown away by his short stories, but the other THREE books are supposedly all more important. Given the mind of their author, I believe it. Oh, the treasures ahead.

The cynic in me would like to know about the essays that didn't make it into this collection, but never mind. Lu Xun opposed that sort of cynicism. I'm happy to spend a whole lotta time with Lu Xun, and I can.

Can you? I don't know. Check your local libraries, bookstores, websites if you must. Lately, I've read email from several Westerners who are familiar with Lu Xun. There must be a reason.

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LU XUN - SELECTED WORKS - VOLUMES TWO THRU FOUR

I'm pleased to report that Amazon.com sells a short story collection containing all 25 of Lu Xun's short stories, not just the 18 reviewed above. What this means is, you can get it at your local bookstore or perhaps even your local library. Go for it! I have it, I've read it, I love it.

Now then. I also mentioned in my previous review that the anthology claims his essays are his greatest contribution. So how do they measure up?

They measure up just fine, thank you very much. He is a master of satire and he does use words as weapons. He can make you laugh and think at the same time. A remarkable clarity of thought combined with an enviable gift for communication. Again, one need not be from China, or from the early 20th century, to appreciate this remarkable person.

When I reviewed his fiction, I used the phrase "gentle wit" even though it wasn't always gentle. Regarding his essays, I'll say biting wit. Acid wit. Devastating wit. Think Jonathan Swift, think Bertrand Russell, strip them of the rubbish and make them far more prolific. Lu Xun's even better than that, but at least you'll be on the right track.

(I almost mentioned Oscar Wilde, but he wasn't quite disciplined enough to join Lu Xun's tier. Damn witty, though.)

I don't know that you can find these essays. If you can, get them. If not, well, the short stories probably are more "timeless." I probably enjoyed the essays more on my first reading than I did the stories. But I've since read the stories numerous times, and own a collection. It's hard to say whether or not the essays would hold up to the test of repetition so well, no matter how witty their author. Essays are like that, I think.

Finally, since I've been to Lu Xun's ancestral home, and since I have some of his short stories (English translation) on my website, and I've given him his own page at Lu Xun, you can probably guess that I want to give this author my highest praise. I'm trying. Get the book!

In this book by Lu xun, a greatest Chinese fiction writer in the history, you will see some influence from Russian literature, such as Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, yet Lu xun manages to keep the Chinese atmosphere by the vivid descriptions on things he sees in China. "Diary of a Madman" is absolutely wonderful. Comparing it to Gogol's story of "Diary of a Madman" it is interesting how Lu xun explores the reality in such a different way from Gogol and still cuts one side of humanity open to the readers. If you like Chinese poetry, this book by Lu xun is a must! It's nothing like any novels written by Chinese Americans because you feel the sense of China in his stories while you can relate to all the characters' mental pain and suffer through his gorgeous language. I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy ethnic literature, Russian literature, and Chinese poetry, or those who simply enjoy literature.

I walked into Standford University bookstore on Sunday afternoon and saw the translation of 'Diary of a Madman'. I flipped through the pages and saw the short story 'Ah Q - real story' so I grabbed one book just to see the translation. As a student grew up in Taiwan, I knew Lu Xun's stories in Chinese well in high school. Actually even some of his work was in high school Chinese Literature curriculum. But I could not put it down until I finished reading the translation of 'Ah Q - real story'.

It is really a masterpiece in translation. The translator is both master in Chinese and English. I like the introductions, a foreigner's introduction about an author is more in reality, dealing both success and failure of Mr. Lu's life. Besides, as the translator said he tried to imagine what Mr. Lu would said if his native language is English. He really captured the essence of it. I really like it. It is a great way to know English style from an Engineer major point of view.

This was an excellent book. We went to the Bay to do snorkeling and used this book as a complete and comprehensive reference guide.

This guide was extremely helpful in planning several snorkeling trips to Hanauma Bay over the last three years. The ariel views of the bay and the detailed directions for the different levels of abilities were both accurate and informative. I believe this information would prove beneficial to anyone planning on visiting the park, whether they are a swimmer, begginer snorkeler, or advanced scuba diver. Although the park staff stand ready to answer any questions you may have, this book's overview of the bay definitely comes in handy. I especially liked the information on all the wildlife and marine critters that call the bay their home.

I would also suggest getting a hold of two other books to compliment this one: The O`ahu Snorkeler and Shore Divers Guide by Francisco B. DeCarvalho and Hawaii's Fishes by John P. Hoover. Both these books contain information on Hanauma Bay and its inhabitants, as well as covering many of O`ahu's other snorkel and dive sites and would make any diving/snorkeling trip to the bay a success.

Beautiful full color guide to what you will see while walking around, and swimming in Hanauma Bay. Page after page of quality photographs of the wildlife living within. Suggests several tours for walking, and various snorkeling and scuba abilities. All with appropriate safety cautions sprinkled throughout. If you need to know the differences between a moray and a tang, or even several kinds of tang, this is the book for you. It also serves as a nice momento of a day spent swimming with the fishys!

This is a great book on Hanauma Bay, and one I often recommend for visitors. It is very different from the other books about Hanauma Bay, in that it is organized as to where you are and what you'll see, as opposed to a grand listing of everything. Are you planning on just walking along the beach? Going out to the deeper water? Wading? These specific ecosystems and habitats have their uniqueness, and this book points them out. Inexpensive, well organized, and with David Schrichte's superb photography (and I mean superb), this book is a great reference to obtain prior to visiting the Bay. Ironically, I also recommend that folks get a copy just for the photos, cutting out what they like for their scrapbooks. Schrichte's photos are much better than you can take with your underwater point-and-shoot camera, and the price is about the same.

Brocker's purpose in writing this book was to memorialize the people who "lived, died, and were for the most part forgotten on a little parcel of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean." And such honor he bestows! The Hansen's disease (leprosy) which afflicted these people was a terrible, disfiguring, and ultimately fatal disease brought to Hawaii by immigrants, but the steps taken to eradicate its spread by isolating the victims must have been at least as devastating to the family-oriented Hawaiians as the disease itself.

It is difficult even to imagine a life and death worse than that which awaited the lepers in the Kalaupapa colony. Yet their lives surely would have been worse, had it not been for the efforts of Father Damien, the Belgian priest who himself fell victim to the disease sixteen years after he began his work in the colony. Historic photographs of Father Damien and his aides bring them to life and honor their efforts. Brocker's descriptions and photographs of the inhospitable, barren, and windswept peninsula of Kalaupapa itself (chosen because it was so isolated and so unsuited to any other kind of settlement), make real the magnitude of Father Damien's efforts. There were no trees, no grass, no fishing places--just wind, dampness, and pounding surf. Most haunting are his photographs and stories of the poor souls who were wrested from their families and sent to Kalaupapa to die apart from them.

Of these, the most affecting of all, of course, are the children's pictures. Photographs of very young girls, sitting primly in rows, as if they were posing for a 3rd grade school picture, little boys sitting on the ground, as if waiting for a picnic, and the one I can't forget, that of a group sitting on the porch outside the boys' home, with a "small boy, who is hardly taller than the benches on which the others sit." Perhaps he was tiny Beka, aged four, from Maui, who, according to records, was sent all alone to live the remaining three years of his life and to die in a harsh and foreign place without any of his loved ones around. With his photographs and text, Brocker does great honor to the lives of all these unfortunate souls. The rest of us can only be grateful that our own children, grandchildren, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins do not have to suffer a similar fate to that of Beka, aged four. Mary Whipple

I discovered Brocker's book while doing research for my own writing on Father Damien. I was thrilled to get my hands on a book with so much visual as well as written information. I am moved to discover the deep respect and affection that Brocker expressed in this incredible work of art. I trust that this telling of the Kalaupapa story will be as transforming for our time as Damien's work was in his.

In The Lands of Father Damien, Author Brocker follows the footsteps of this remarkable man as he answered the ultimate plea for help by volunteering in 1873 to go to Kalawao on the Kalaupapa Peninsula where, King Kamehameha V had banished those among his people who were infected with the dreaded disease of leprosy, later identified as Hansen's Disease. It is an exceptional book that is easy to read, and offers up-to-date information about Blessed Father Damien. The volume would grace any library shelf and is a book to be shared with family, students, educators and group leaders.

Hawaii Catholic Herald

James Brocker has published a loving tribute to Blessed Damien de Veuster, the people to whom he gave his life, and the special place in which they lived and he served. The book tells the story of the place first cursed as a dumping ground for a people with a hideous disease; a place then given deliverance through the life and sacrifice of a Catholic missionary priest.

Brocker's text includes a geological and pre-leprosy history of Kalaupapa before, a description of Hansen's disease, and a chronology of significant dates relating to the settlement.

But it is his photos, with their generously detailed captions, that distinguish this book. They successfully capture a place whose starkness and beauty is preserved in its isolation.

The respect and love the author has for this land and its people are clearly evident in this book.

The Lands of Father Damien is a worthy memorial to the living and dead of Kalawao and Kalaupapa.

A good discussion of how people really got along. Butresses current ideas about the problems between the races.

Very interesting and well written work; carefully researched with appropriate citations. It reminds us of how different a nation we were in the 1940's--and how different Hawaii was from the rest of the nation. Certainly Hawaii was far from perfect, but it was a much more tolerant place than most of the rest of the country. The book provides fascinating examples of these differences. A very worthwhile read!

This book is the best ever done on the WWII scene in the Islands. The research is exhaustive, and the stories extremely well-told. I am a historian and author in Hawai'i--concentrating on the 19th century but well aware of the 20th--and the authors have done a great job of not only telling the stories but coming to the correct conclusions. The two chapters on Black soldiers and the sex trade are especially good.

The title refers to the idea that Hawai'i, with very different foods, traditions and most of its population Oriental and Polynesian, was the first strange place that most young servicemen ever encountered. On their way to fight Japanese, they are stationed on an island with more than a third of the population of Japanese ancestory.

If you want an insight as to the impact of suddenly tripling the population of an island, primarily with young fighting men, this is the book. It's a GREAT read, and it all happened!

SUMMARY: facts and interpretation of the effects of WW2 in Hawaii

REVIEW: The authors interviewed many people, including my father, Anthony Capanna, as they wrote this account of WW2 in Hawaii. Although I think their account is quite accurate (and was grateful they depicted my father as the good/honest/moral person he is), there are parts of the book that are quite graphic as pertaining to the sleazier side of what went on after Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Factual, yes; worth reading, if you need it as a research tool; a bit jolting and base...yes. I don't recommend it for young people.

Thise guide is very helpful to book good hotel without spend much money, you can visit many place only with Fodor's explanations.

I suggest to buy thise guide to have a wonderful trip!!!
Hawaii are a macic islands and only reading Fodor's you can imagine the places.

Pamela - Italia

EXCELLENT service. Book arrived in a very timely manner and in perfect condition - very well packaged.

I have really enjoyed reading this book. It if full of important information about Hawaii, especially if you have never been there before. I can't wait until we take our trip in the winter.

Two books that I recommend reading before going to Hawaii are Fodor's Hawaii 2008 and No Worries Hawaii. I read both cover to cover and really got alot out of them. Each provides what the other has left out.

If you live almost anywhere in Japan, you will see the landscape dotted with red torii gates that are the signature of Inari Shrines. From little roadside sheds to great shrine complexes, from evergreen groves to office building rooftops, they're everywhere. And there's hardly a local shrine that doesn't have a smaller Inari shrine off to the side on its grounds. So certainly something so prevalent, and obviously the object of active religious practice, must hold an important key to understanding religion in Japan. And yet almost no scholars have paid much attention to Inari worship, with the thankful exception of Smeyers, who does a truly excellent job in this very important study.

The merits of this book are many. The primarily anthropological approach allows the author to zero in on what Inari really means to various people without getting tangled up in the Buddhism or Shinto question (to which the answer is perhaps both and neither), but she deftly avoids the socioeconomomic reductivism, the ahistorical fuzziness, and the cultural essentialism into which such an approach can lapse. The folk religion/elite religion false dichotomy is also transcended in favor of a multivalent look at the different significances of Inari from multiple perspectives and differing contexts along with how these all mutually conflict against, interact with, or deliberately ignore each other.

"The Fox and the Jewel" is of high scholarly caliber, full of fascinating little details which all add to the big picture (neither the forest nor the trees are lost sight of here). And it is invaluable for helping us understand this vital religious phenomenon ubiquitious in Japan.

Smyers, an acknowledged expert on the cult of Inari (Japanese Rice God/dess) has provided a thorough and engaging examination of the many facets of Inari worship and symbology. Her analysis, both anecdotal and anthropological, of the role of women in the shamanistic forms of Inari worship brings to light
their importance in Japan's shamanic past and present. Smyers obtained access to many levels of Inari worship, from fire ceremonies held in individual believers' homes (a suspensful and riveting account), to the larger Inari centers throughout Japan, and has provided a detailed, comprehensive and
fascinating account of this little-known, but widespread, form of worship. A must read for anyone interested in Japan, Shinto, Buddhism, shamanism and the metaphysical.

This book covers the Shinto, Buddhist and Shaman aspects of Inari worship in Japan. It is very clearly written and well researched. The book is one of the best I have found on Japanese culture, an area of current interest to me.

Well, I have been familiar with Inari, sort of "Fox God", since I was born and raised in Japan. However, after I read this book, I noticed that I had not known what Inari really means! Why do we have so many "Fox God shrines" in Japan? What is the relationship beteen Shinto and Inari? What about Inari and Buddhisim?

I have not seen a book like this, even in Japanese, which ambitiously tries to investigate for these complicated, but culturally fascinating issues. The author lived in Japan for a couple of years, at two major Inari Shrines (Fushimi and Toyokawa), and conuducted a thorough field study. In fact, the author could not solve all the intricated miteries of Inari, but, most importantly, she found out that even many priests and monks working at Fushimi or Toyokawa do not know histories of their shrines, nor understand what Inari really means! In that sense, Inari is not purely religion, but sort of a popular culture and practice. So, we may say this is a great book of anthropology of Japanese culture.

I met Karen, the author, at the Jung Institute in Zurich. Karen introduced herself, in Japanese, as "Kitsune-Onna", Fox-woman. She was so brave that she quit a tenure position in an American college, and decided to become an Jungian analyst. Karen, I look forward to seeing you again, and to see what comes out from the combination of your American nativeness, deep insight of Japanese culture, and Jungian psychology.