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Ioannis Gaitanidis, Kakusareta Shōtoku Taishi: Kingendai Nihon no gishi to okaruto bunka (Shōtoku Taishi Veiled: Alternative Histories and Occulture in Modern Japan), Social Science Japan Journal, Volume 28, Issue 1, Winter 2025, jyaf005, https://doi.org/10.1093/ssjj/jyaf005
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Extract
“Oh, no! Not another Shōtoku Taishi book!” If you have ever had this thought while strolling between the shelves of a bookshop in Japan, this book is definitely for you. You will find in it the reasons for today’s persistent—the author uses the more accurately sounding adjective shitsukoi (177)—fascination with Prince Shōtoku, often regarded as the patron saint of Japanese Buddhism, the father of the Japanese State and the Japanese Constitution, and the instigator of a plethora of sometimes superhuman deeds, found in many hagiographical texts produced since his death in 622 ad.
Historians of Buddhism in Japan are perhaps familiar with the English-language scholarly books that have discussed the development of a Shōtoku cult following his death (Como 2008; Pradel 2016) and continuing into the period from the 10th to the 14th centuries (Lee 2007; Carr 2012). They would also know that there has never been a dedicated monograph about narratives centered on Shōtoku in the modern period, in any language. This is why Orion Klautau’s book has already received significant praise from Japanese scholars across the disciplines and was awarded the 10th Nakamura Hajime Prize usually dedicated to studies of Buddhism. In sum, this is a must-read if you are a Shōtoku scholar.
