Klein offers a meticulous explication of a group of literary commentaries of the mid-thirteenth century in Japan that adapted precepts of esoteric Shingon Buddhism...to construct 'hidden' meanings in canonical texts such as the Tales of Ise and the Kokinshu poetry anthology...With brilliant and disarming clarity, Klein analyzes the operation of allegorizing strategies in literary discourse and the cultural and textual triggers that bring such readings into play.
   --S. Arntzen, Choice

Susan Blakeley Klein is Assistant Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of California, Irvine.