of Asian alterity, and what meaning this had for European audiences. Phillips’ work is, then, the first steps on an all-important movement towards a reception history of the reports of central and late medieval Europeans returning from Asia. Many medievalists have rejected the claims made by Omar Saïd’s Orientalism, that the European mindset sought to belittle, dominate, and colonise Eastern cultures, and that the very idea of Eastern cultures reflects a colonialist mentality rather than any degree of relationship between the various cultures that made up the mythologised East. While these ideas may ring true for the early and late modern co- lonialist mindset, Phillips convincingly shows that it is not a useful way of thinking about the Middle Ages. Rather, Phillips shows that the driving factors behind the consumption of information about Asia in the Middle Ages were entertainment, fas- cination, curiosity, and wonder. Phillips explores Marco Polo’s work in particular, and shows that he and his co-author Rusticello da Pisa constructed a text that was replete with wonders that were novel to European audiences, therefore wondrous and exciting. Phillips’ book has value beyond the anti-Saïd polemic, and the work has applica- tions for students and experts alike. In Chapter 1, Phillips puts forward her case against Saïd’s representation of the Middle Ages. In Chapter 2, Phillips provides a reception history analysis of the travel texts that make up the subject of the book. In Chapter 3, Phillips considers the validity of the concept of a genre of “travel writ- ing” for the Middle Ages. This chapter would be especially useful to students who might expect medieval travelogues to be comparable to the normalised first-person constructions of the genre of modern travel writing. Phillips explores the variety of reactions of modern readers to Marco Polo’s Travels, a text which is a focus of Be- yond Orientalism. From here, Phillips moves into the second, thematic section of her book, which considers a number of particular themes running through the construc- tion of alterity in the travel texts. These are specifically food, femininities, civility, and bodies. It is argued that by latching on to subjects such as these, authors were attempting to make their own works more exciting by referring to Asian customs that were Other to European audiences. All in all, Kim Phillips’ work would make a valuable addition to the shelves of anyone interested in medieval travel, Asia’s early contacts with Europe, ethnography, or the history of encounter and alterity. KEAGAN BREWER University of Sydney CLARK CHILSON: Secrecy’s Power: Covert Shin Buddhists in Japan and Contradictions of Concealment. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014; pp. xvii + 242. This short monograph (the substance of which is a mere 197 pages) is a study of covert Shin Buddhism, focusing on a group who refer to their faith as Urahomon (some other groups use hiji bomon). Chilson studied them closely from 1998 to 2001, and his insights into this fascinating but little-known phenomenon make this book compulsive reading. Chilson explains first that Shin, founded by Shinran (1173–1263), is in the BOOK REVIEWS 430 © 2016 Religious History Association bs_bs_banner