For occidental travelers Japan can often feel like a land set apart. While much seems familiar, so many aspects of culture have a certain twist that strikes the viewer as somehow fundamentally different, even to the pith of experience. Hoover gives the sense a background for anyone interested in beginning to understand both historical and modern Japan. Much of the ethos of zen is predicated upon training the mind to act clearly and lucidly: witness great masters of painting and haiku poetry, at study for years so that, when the time comes to create a masterpiece, their brushes and pens can flow thoughtlessly and fluidly, expressing deep truths about reality. For zen practitioners the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum of reality (a phrase cribbed from FSC Northrup) is the very fabric of existence. Not only are aesthetics of primary importance in zen, they are representative of everything. A rock garden is not only a backyard place for meditation, its -scape can be meant to convey subtle truths about the universe entire, and our relationship to it.
Hoover has accomplished something quite impressive in such a short work: he has written a cogent, and relatively nuanced history of Japan and the development of zen culture. The work should serve as a good base to continue to explore different understandings of a culture providing a different take of the onrush of history.
