A Quarterly of Criticism and Review i^^^^^^^^fcEjfc $15

Books in Reviewtask. Utilizing contemporary critiques ofWestern anthropology and anthropologists,she evaluates this early icon of Japaneseethnology, by probing the often ignoredrelationship between Yanagita and his primaryTono informant—the teller of the Tonotales to the folklorist. Emerging questionsinclude, 'Who has claim to authorship?', and'Where are the boundaries of creativity andcollaboration in this early work of Japaneseanthropology, as in all anthropology?'Ivy provides an intriguing ethnographicaccount of memorializing the dead onMount Osore, suggesting that ritual practicesof recalling the dead serve eventually,not as a means of remembering, but as ameans of forgetting those who havedeparted from this life. A subtle suggestion,which links such practices to other waysJapanese are attempting to recall their culturalpast, which Ivy claims is proof of itsvanishing. A final essay on taishu engekiprovides another rich ethnographicaccount of localized folk theatre, while suggestingthat the revitalization of this traditionaltheatre art involves a shift in contextto accommodate modern capitalist underpinningsof contemporary Japanese culture.Such marginalized events and theefforts made to preserve them are againseen by Ivy as elements of a vanishingnational identity, as Japanese culture isreplaced by the culture of capitalism.Although I believe Ivy has made animmensely important contribution with thiswork, I cannot fully agree with her stancethat Japan's extensive cultural loss is sopotentially painful that full realization mustbe resisted. I would instead suggest thatimages of yesterdays traditionalist lifeways,help Japanese cope with the fear of culturalloss in the present, enabling them to movefurther into an ever changing future.Postmodern FamiliesWayne JohnstonHuman Amusements. M & S $18.99Russell SmithHow Insensitive. Porcupine's Quill $14.95Reviewed by George WolfWayne Johnston writes family histories, butnot the sort—The Time of Their Lives(1987) excepted—that span generations.Like social historians who sacrifice scopefor depth, Johnston represents a vivid senseof dailiness, the feel and texture of being ina particular family in a particular time andplace. In his three earlier novels, the placewas his native Newfoundland. In HumanAmusements (1994) it's Toronto. But whereverhis fictions unfold, his deepest settingis the family, his distinctive skill the creationof those small, significant events thataccumulate toward eruptions and landslidesfew families manage to escape.Human Amusement's Prendergasts—Audrey, Peter, and son Henry—are anuclear family, cut off from the sprawlingcollections of quirky relatives and friendlyaccomplices peopling the worlds of TheStory of Bobby O'Malley (1985), The Time ofTheir Lives, and The Divine Ryans (1990).With neither clan nor regional bonds toanchor them, the Prendergasts fix theirlives to television. The TV Prendergasts thetabloids call them, Audrey having scripteda hit syndicated kids' show in which she asMiss Mary and Henry as the Bees (BeeGood and alter ego Bee Bad) star. "RumpusRoom" (older readers may flash back to"Romper Room"), a classic of its kind,becomes the site in television land whereHenry, mutely encased in his Bee costumes,miming the didactic roles his mother hasscripted for him, lives much of his boyhood.For him, as he recalls at the openingof his richly comic narrative, "the earlydays of television are the early days ofeverything." Only his skeptical father, a144