Imaginative Mapping: Landscape and Japanese Identity in the Tokugawa and Meiji Eras by Nobuko Toyosawa (review)

to a certain extent it burdens readers with the work of drawing out larger critical perspectives and meaning. The image of Osaka as a city that was economically crucial in its own right set in opposition to a separate administrative center—a perspective powerfully proposed in the introduction—could, I think, quite effectively have been reiterated and connected to the analyses of individual plays. A more in-depth discussion of how bunraku constructed a perspective toward history and current affairs in the context of particular plays, specifically from the vantage point of Osaka, would have been helpful, especially for readers coming from outside early modern theater studies. I would have been interested, too, to see more discussion on how the various historical and contemporary issues that the authors introduce—international maritime relations, monetary plans adopted at different periods, and intellectual efforts to compile historical knowledge—trickled down to the public, or, conversely, how they were scrutinized by the public. In arguing for a countercultural perspective on bunraku, it seems the authors could have made more of an effort to link political affairs at the highest echelons of society with their everyday effects, and to connect consciousness at the administrative level with public consciousness. Of course, it is often easiest to suggest improvements of this sort when a work raises many new questions and avenues for exploration, and that is certainly the case here. In their very last paragraph, the authors connect bunraku performance to a long tradition of oral narratives while also suggesting a connection with benshi, who provided narration for silent films in the twentieth century, and with voice actors in anime and video games (p. 212). For me, the greatest value of this book lies in the promise it offers of unconventional ways of understanding the theater and in its gestures toward unexplored territories into which bunraku studies can still expand. Japanese Political Theatre in the 18th Century is a carefully researched book that illuminates the importance of various sociohistorical issues and enriches studies of early modern theater, literature, and culture. It is an important contribution, and one that can be integrated well into both undergraduate and graduate classrooms.