"Highly recommended."--K. Hirano, CHOICE "[I]nteresting and persuasive."--Thomas Keirstead, The Journal of Asian Studies "Burns rightly argues that scholars of Japanese culture and antiquity during the early modern period were not ideologically united. Although the analyses presented in this book are sometimes demanding, they help to further our understanding of an important yet often misunderstood phenomenon."--Mark McNally, American Historical Review "Susan L. Burns provides an excellent corrective to the impression that kokugaku scholarship of the eighteenth century led almost inevitably to the development of modern Shinto nationalism. Beautifully written for a specialized audience, .

Before the Nation provides provocative insights into the varied logic and concerns of eighteenth-century kokugaku, with welcome summaries of later, less renowned scholars' work as well."--Sarah Thal, Social Anthropology "[A] superb analytical study of the Kokugaku movement before and during the early stages of the Meiji era. [Burns] works from a very broad range of original sources and engages in extensive literary analysis of contemporary texts to support her arguments. Her work is like a brilliant search light that exposes the reader to both the complexity as well as the brilliance of Japanese scholarship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before the Nation is one of those rare feats of scholarship that should become mandatory reading for any student of pre-modern Japanese history and politics."--Daniel A. Metraux, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies "Susan Burns has produced a fine study of a complex and important subject. [T]he book will be read with great profit by historians, linguists, specialists in literature and anyone trying to untangle the many puzzles of Japanese nationalism.

"--Sandra Wilson, Intersections.