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Hardacre (Japanese religion and society, Harvard) offers a monumental study of how the Japanese religious tradition of Shinto evolved. Beyond clan-based cults of local spirits (kami), she contends, Shinto institutionalization began in the late 600s CE, when the leading (imperial) clan sought to supplement Chinese sources of political authority, especially Buddhism, with sources allegedly indigenous by establishing a court ritual calendar and bureau dubbed Council of Divinities (Jingikan). But a strict demarcation was illusory: the very word Shinto, first appearing in a court chronicle of 720, was Chinese. For the next millennium, Buddhism maintained and expanded its predominance, interpreting kami as local avatars of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Nativist reactions eventually appeared. In the late 1400s, a Jingikan official asserted Shinto's doctrinal independence from Buddhism and even its superiority. In the 1700s-1800s, rejection of the foreign evolved into a political program leading to the overthrow of the military government (1868). So-called restored imperial rule managed Shinto for political agendas culminating in the Pacific War. Since then, disestablished Shinto has found itself competing for public engagement and economic support during a general decline of interest in religion. An excellent scholarly apparatus is included.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.