The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community.(Review)

SCHNELL, SCOTT. The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999. xi + 363 pages. Maps, illustrations, tables, bibliography, index. Paper US$33.95; ISBN 0-8248-2141-6.

I often talk to myself. So when I finished the last page of The Rousing Drum and uttered to myself, "Great book!" I was not unduly perplexed.

The stage for this pointedly human drama is the mountain-locked town of Furukawa. The timeline, which touches on the mythic past, begins roughly with the Meiji Restoration (1868) and extends to the present. The ...

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