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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 134.82.7.18 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 09:30:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 266 REVIEWSbeginnings they can be used to weld together not only a new nation state, but also one in which a totalitarian fanaticism utterly alien to the real tradition of the culture can drive that nation to catastrophe. It is odd to find five paragraphs on pp. 40-41 reproduced word for word on pp. 157-59. And the index ends with the entry for World War II, so that readers have to find their own way to Yamagata Aritomo and the Yasukuni Shrine. But these are insignificant faults of copy editor or publisher, and we have to thank Helen Hardacre once more for another illuminating contribution to our understanding of the complexities of the religious scene in Japan. Also for a warning of what ravages can be perpetrated by the "invention of tradition."The Chosen One: Succession and Adoption in the Court of Ming Shizong by Carney T. Fisher. Australian National University, FEH/ ASAA East Asia Series. Sidney: Allen and Unwin, 1990. Pp. x + 230. $24.95. Hung-lam Chu, Academia SinicaCarney Fisher's book, The Chosen One, is ultimately an "interpretive commentary" on that momentous event in the Ming court following the emperor Shizong's succession to the throne of his cousin, the heirless emperor Wuzong, who was the only living son of the beloved emperor Xiaozong. Known in Chinese history as "Dali yi," or the Great Ritual Controversy, as Fisher rendered it, this protracted dispute over the ritual and thence the political and social status of several key members of three generations of the imperial family had much wider cultural implications than its immediate historical outcome. Historians from late Ming times on have found it necessary to offer their own analysis of the issues and to pass judgment on the participants. Their conclusions are anything but conclusive.Fisher has likewise attempted to find the meaning of this dispute in a cultural context. The merits of his discussions have been reviewed by Edward Farmer' andJames Geiss, who also disputed over 1 JAS 51.3 (1992): 642-43. This content downloaded from 134.82.7.18 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 09:30:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS 267

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