This book is designed for general readers interested in Japanese Buddhism and the Christian Reformation. The monograph is comprised of two discussions: historical and theological. Although the historical discussion is mostly a summary of secondary English-language sources, the theological discussion is worth reading. This theological part is based on primary Christian or Buddhist documents not only in English but also in other languages, such as German, Latin, and Japanese.

Kirk R. MacGregor attempts to illustrate that the two social catastrophes in late-twelfth-century Japan and in fourteenth-century Europe caused “one and the same” (313) religious reform of Buddhism and Christianity respectively. The Black Death in Europe, according to the author, brought about a reformative movement against the Roman Catholic Church and eventually gave birth to another type of divine-human relationship that emphasized “faith to grace” (313) in a soteriological way. From the author's point of view, Buddhism in the Kamakura period experienced a similar “religious” reform. Equivalent to the Black Death was what the author calls the “Kamakura Takeover” (7), in which social peace was disrupted by the Kamakura shogun's warrior bands that decentralized the country, which had been unified by the Emperor and Kyoto nobility into numerous local territories.

In order to prove that the “Kamakura Takeover” was the cause of the “religious reform,” and that Kamakura Buddhism was a significant “religious reform” comparable with the Protestant Reformation, the book is organized into five main chapters preceded by a foreword and an introduction. The historiographical introduction justifies the author's comparison between the Christian Reformation and Kamakura Buddhism. The first chapter describes the historical background of Europe before the Black Death and of Japan before the political rise of the Fujiwara clan in the ninth century. The second chapter describes the birth of a new type of Buddhism and the rise of new Christian interpretations about divine-human relationships, and provides an account of how social catastrophes caused “religious reformations” in tenth-century Japan and Europe alike. The following two chapters shift to the comparison between Buddhist thinkers in the Kamakura period and Protestant theologians in the sixteenth century; between Hōnen and Luther in the third chapter as well as between Shinran and Calvin in the fourth chapter. Finally, the author summarizes the entire discussion in the chapter of “Concluding Reflections.”

The monograph will provoke four key questions from academic readers. The first issue may concern why the second chapter contains no passages about the cause and effect between the “Kamakura Takeover” and the subsequent “reforms” of Buddhism, in such a way as clearly declared by the subtitle and in the introduction. The author describes successive emperors' reign in the tenth century rather than shogunate's rule in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and appears to have confused the two. In order to point to a social catastrophe, the author somehow sets up the rivalry between the bands of local warriors and the imperial forces allied with the Fujiwara clan in the tenth century. Consequently, the author contends that Buddhism was reformed by contemporary thinkers, such as Yoshishige-no-Yasutane and Genshin in the tenth century. The second chapter would be better served by dealing with Hōnen and Shinran during the rule by the Kamakura shogunate in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

The second issue is whether the “Kamakura Takeover” was a “social catastrophe” equivalent to the Black Death. The battles in twelfth-century Japan remained only local and ended within a short period unlike the civil wars or nationwide massacres in the twentieth-century. The Taira clan in Kyoto and western Japan and the Minamoto clan in eastern Japan were at war from 1180 to 1185. And yet, in each battle, they fought against each other just occasionally and locally, neither nationwide nor continually throughout six years. For example, the battle of Dan-no-ura, which determined the ultimate defeat of the Taira clan on March 24, 1185 ended within a day and took place in a small seashore area near today's Yamaguchi prefecture. As a result, for most farmers and peasants, the social damage by local battles was limited. The majority of the Japanese population, although exploited because of their position at the lower levels of social hierarchy, maintained a self-sustaining agrarian economy despite the change to the upper part of hierarchy. Therefore the proposed “social catastrophe” in Japan is not a convincing comparison to the Black Death.

The third issue is whether Kamakura Buddhism should be compared with the Christian Reformation. Whether Kamakura Buddhism can be considered as the Japanese mode of religious reformation is a controversial issue that has involved numerous scholars and remained unsettled for no less than a century. Hōnen's or Shinran's interpretation of Buddhism can also be regarded as incomparable with Protestantism in Europe because this new Buddhism invoked neither social divide nor significant conflicts among common believers. All such opposing interpretations are somehow omitted from inclusion in the author's discussion.

The fourth issue is whether the two sets of theological comparisons are “new” or “the first” (xv, 7) approaches as claimed by John K. Simmons in the foreword and by the author. Several years before the publication of this book, for example, a comparison was made between Hōnen and Luther by Kenneth D. Lee (“Comparative Analysis of Shinran's Shinjin and Calvin's Faith,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 24 [2004]: 171–190) as well as between Shinran and Calvin by Nakao Renzoh (“Hōnen-to rutā-no tsumi-no jikaku,” Nanzan shingaku bessatu 20 [2005]: 1–750). Because both Simmons and MacGregor assert that MacGregor's comparisons are pioneering attempts, they may need to elucidate how Lee's or Nakao's comparison cannot be considered to be the first approach.

Overall, one may learn much from a critical reading of this monograph. This study provides good opportunities to identify common epistemological difficulties in intercultural comparisons. It is hard to discuss Japanese history or Buddhism in English by claiming an original approach without a sufficient command of Japanese-language historiography. Moreover, in order to discuss Buddhist reforms, one should consider not only written dogmata or sutras but also the historical influence on society.