This study is a welcome addition to the small collection of academic books and articles on the history of Christianity in Japan that are available in the English language. Up till now, the focus has understandably been on missionaries and Japanese Christians during the period of Roman Catholic activity which began in 1549 and ended in expulsions and escalating persecutions less than a century later, or during the period that began with the arrival of Roman Catholic, Protestant and Russian Orthodox missionaries after the opening of the treaty ports in 1859. Paramore, however, concentrates not on the limited acceptance of Christianity, but on the anti-Christian ideology that developed out of its rejection. He analyses key texts produced from 1600 to 1900, including letters and diplomatic documents, and the context in which they were written, and ably demonstrates that this ideology did not signify a conflict between ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ thought. Rather, ‘Christians’, with their rejection of supreme loyalty to a feudal lord, or to the emperor, in favour of a foreign deity, became a symbol of ‘the other’ in general. Anti-Christian discourse therefore functioned as a weapon of domestic social control, and in defining the boundaries of orthodoxy. The threats from deviant Christian groups within Japan, or from aggressive ‘Christian’ countries outside, were imaginary, or even purposely constructed, rather than actual. Anti-Christian ideology from 1600 to 1900 had three peaks: during the stabilisation of Tokugawa rule in the mid-seventeenth century, during its collapse in the face of both domestic and foreign challenges around two centuries later, and during the establishment of the nationalist ideology of Meiji Japan in the 1890s. While recognising differences, however, Paramore emphasises the continuity of both form and function throughout this time. Despite some weaknesses in the sections that deal specifically with Christianity in Japan, the scope of the book is impressive. In particular, as Paramore himself indicates, the issues that he identifies have implications beyond Japan for our understanding of the relationships between religion and power, and challenge assumptions about the link between secularisation and modernisation.