"A pioneer study of Japanese new religions."
--H. Byron Earhart in Contemporary Sociology

"A significant work and highly recommended."
--Robert S. Ellwood in the Journal of Japanese Studies

"An important study and a significant contribution to the field."
--David Barnhill in The Journal of Asian Studies

"An excellent book: informative, interesting, worthwhile, systematic, and highly reasonable in its analysis and interpretation. Guthrie's argument, essentially a functionalist one, is persuasive and new."
--Keith Brown, University of Pittsburgh

"A really worthwhile book [that] should have broad implications."
--Richard Fox Young in Monumenta Nipponica

A Japanese New Religion describes the lives of members of a major, contemporary Japanese Buddhist movement (Risshô Kôsei-kai) in the context of their mountain farming hamlet, providing an impressive account of the variety of religious experiences and beliefs that have affected the villagers. That is, Yamanaka residents are described not only as Buddhists, or shamans, or Shintoists, or members of Kôsei-kai, but also in their full, broad-based religious and ethnographic context.