Cynthea J. Bogel’s book With a Single Glance is a page-turner. As dedicated as I am to the topic of premodern Japanese religion, it is not often that I stay up later than I intended, engrossed in the unfolding story. That was my experience of Bogel’s book. Yes, it is erudite and, yes, the plates are gorgeous, but most of all it is a fun read. The book is at the same time deep and breezy.

Bogel aims to show that Kûkai, the great Buddhist saint, imported a new language of visuality to Japan. Some of this he brought from China, and some of it was of his own creation. She portrays Kûkai vividly, as an inspired genius who through his prodigious skill in Chinese and his keen intellect was able to gain access to the inner circle of Tang Chinese Buddhism in Chang’an at the start of the ninth century. Here, much of the storyline may be well known to many of her readers, but Bogel’s telling of it is very compelling. At the crux of her argument about Kûkai’s introduction of a new visual language, or a new semiotic sense, is the notion of a “logic of similarity” inherent in Esoteric Buddhism. That is, the sign is the thing itself—the mandala is the cosmos, the image is the deity, the practitioner is the Dharmakaya Buddha Vairocana. In the world of Shingon Buddhist doctrine and practice, there can be no such thing as a symbol. This “logic of similarity,” Bogel argues, is Kûkai’s legacy and is the crucial difference between the visual regimes of the ninth century and what came before. Bogel presents the esoteric or mikkyô theory of images as one that does away with the idea of skillful means (upaya, hôben, fangbian), one that sees images as aspects of reality, not as props or visual aids. Transformation of the body, speech, and mind of the practitioner takes place through a richly textured interplay between text, image, and bodily practice. She shows readers that the world of ritual is a key that unlocks the secrets of Shingon iconography, and in the end her book solves certain mysteries about the programming of image installation in ninth-century East Asia more generally.

With a Single Glance is beautifully designed, from the dust jacket, to the embossed cloth cover, to the exceptionally high-quality plates, to the lining papers of the sublime keepsake robes Kûkai and his illustrious rival Saichô inherited from their Tang masters. It has won its designer, Thomas Eykemans, the Scholarly Illustrated design award from the Association of American University Presses. This is not at all surprising; the charts, plates, maps, and diagrams are also all impeccable.

Along with being well written, With a Single Glance is broad in scope and welcoming to a variety of readers. It is not rendered opaque by the overuse of technical language from the mikkyô tradition or from critical theory; the book is readable and straightforward in a very refreshing way. Bogel begins by setting her definitions. In recent years, a great deal has been written in English on the question of the categories of “esoteric,” “tantric,” and “mikkyô/mijiao/milgyo” Buddhism. (One might point most recently to the volume edited by Charles D. Orzech, Henrik Hjort Sørensen, and Richard Karl Payne, Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia [Leiden: Brill, 2011].) Bogel enters the fray with energy and confidence, addressing various debates on the suitability of this term or that, and manages to wrestle out good solutions for the task at hand. In Bogel’s text, “esoteric” refers to tantric traditions in a general sense, and “Esoteric” is used to refer to Vajrayana (Mantrayana) Buddhism as systematized by Kûkai and Saichô and later generations. (At a few junctures, “Shingon” or “Tendai Esotericism” or some other corollary term is substituted, as appropriate.) Of course, this does not settle matters with regard to the question of “tantra,” but her discussion of the implication of the terms is most useful and welcome.

And so Bogel begins the first of five sections in her bold and cohesive portrayal of the Japanese adoption of the Esoteric mode of seeing. She suggests that the early ninth century marks a shift or a break, the introduction of a different set of lenses for understanding Buddhist doctrine, and for understanding the world itself. This tantra or mikkyô becomes a principal hermeneutic tool for thinking about and for doing Buddhism in Heian Japan. I will briefly review the sections here, without further listing the individual chapter titles. Part 1 is entitled “Definitions and Dynamics” and establishes the terms to be used and the parameters of the study. (Attention to definitional issues and the methodological implications of terminology does not end here. For instance, on page 58 readers are offered a succinct and eloquent statement on why “visual culture” is better than “art.”) The project here at the start, setting the scene for the arguments to be undertaken, is largely a historiographical one. Bogel seeks to strip away false impressions created by centuries of Japanese sectarian scholarship and hagiography to understand the ritual contexts that Kûkai found in China.

Special focus is put upon the historical view of esoteric Buddhsm as it existed in Japan before Kûkai’s sojourn in China. The impetus of recent archeological finds in China leads Bogel to pursue an in situ approach to thinking about Kûkai’s rituals and the real contexts of ninth-century sculptural programs in Japan. For Bogel, mikkyô visuality contains aspects that distinguish it in a fundamental way from the sensibilities of the Nara period. “There is a specific Mikkyô visual culture, one accountable on several levels,” Bogel writes (37). She enumerates these levels more or less as follows: 1) the body, speech, and mind of the Dharmakâya Buddha (Dainichi, Vairocana) are grounded firmly in the somatic field and resonate in the body of the practitioner; 2) the mandala altar is decidedly multimedia; using image, text, sound, and so on, it invokes the attention of the various senses; 3) “one glance” at the deities of the mandala is sufficient for salvation. This first section, so wonderfully textured and detailed, also launches a sort of apologia for images in Buddhism, demonstrating the absolutely integral nature icons played in the tradition from the very start. Part 1 ends by raising thought-provoking questions about the nature of visuality itself.

Part 2, “Mikkyô Visual Culture and Its Sources,” seeks to situate Kûkai’s achievements and the systems he built within their Japanese context and trace their continental roots. The tale of Kûkai’s journey is a gripping one as Bogel relates it. Readers are treated to visions of the swirling bazaars of Chang’an and come to understand the cosmopolitan nature of Kûkai’s experiences there. She also alerts readers to the political uses and connections of tantric ritual, especially the anointing, or abhiṣeka, ritual (kanjô). Kûkai performs it for emperors of Japan as his master Huiguo and Huiguo’s master Amoghavajra (Bukong) had done on behalf of successive generations of Chinese monarchs. In describing Kûkai’s journey, Bogel is able to bring Chang’an to life. Peppering her narrative with the colorful observations of Ennin and Enchin, those later pilgrims, Bogel shows the incredible marble statues of “tantric” deities found at Qianlongsi and unpacks their meaning. (Six of the eleven statues found are stunningly reproduced here.) This section also offers fascinating and sophisticated methodological reflections on the nature and use of sources. Bogel explores the role of iconographic drawings, a much under-researched topic, and also offers an analysis and interpretation of the catalog or record of items—texts, images, ritual instruments—that Kûkai brought back from the mainland.

In part 3, “Visions and Cosmologies,” Bogel continues and deepens an exploration, begun in earlier chapters, of syncretism or combinatory practices encompassing Buddhism, Hinduism, Daoism, Yin-yang Divination, Indian scientific ideas, and Chinese medicine. She also extends her investigation of the question of visuality. What is the vision of deities? How are we seen by the images? Employing the useful notion of darśana from South Asian religions—the notion that one comes before images as much to be gazed upon by them as to gaze upon them—she offers a view of the agency of images and their ability to act at rest. By also examining social context, Bogel moves toward her final arguments regarding the nature of icons in this tradition.

It is perhaps part 4, “Vision, Ritual, and Imagery,” that gets closest to the core of her argument. That is, it is the theory of images introduced by, indeed largely created by, Kûkai that offers a visual path to salvation. This is the “single glance” of the title: the idea that any act of perceiving the myriad forms, sights, and sounds of the world is the direct apprehension of the body, speech, and mind of the cosmic and primordial Buddha Dainichi (Vairocana), an all-pervading presence. The theme of immediacy and of the saving power of vision is woven throughout the book, but is most carefully theorized here. Close attention to Buddhist ideas about vision and the role of ritual manuals, or shidai, in the construction of this understanding of images and their power prepares Bogel to make her closing points regarding the mystery of the Lecture Hall at Tôji, the great temple Kûkai founded in the capital of Kyoto, and its relationship to the locus of ritual and the iconography of spatial relationships.

Part 5, entitled “Choreographies of Ritual Space,” digs into the archives and the excavations, modeling a contextual approach to unraveling the meanings and motivations behind the emplacement of images and their relationship to ritual spaces. As Bogel reveals, this is an especially rich area to ponder, with its two-dimensional and three-dimensional versions of the cosmographic maps called mandalas. She also brings out the relationships between esoteric practice and the protection of the state and the imperial person. Through Kûkai’s influence, the Buddhist halls and iconographic programs of ninth-century Japan are transformed through ritual innovation and a shift in the paradigm of the meaning of images. As is true of the book throughout, Bogel offers evocative and vivid descriptions that allow readers to envision the images utilized in their time and place. Describing an unusual pair of mandalas copied from Chinese models in ninth-century Japan using gold and silver inks, Bogel writes: “In lamplight, because of the refracted light on the metallic lines, themselves drawn with an unwavering hand, the myriad divinities seem to vibrate and hover above a deep space amid oval medallions decorated with phoenixes and floral patterns” (235). By comparing the Japanese cases to practices at the Tang capital, she is able to show that images did not need to be in the same room as a ritual to do their work; they are dynamic at rest.

The book is readable; it is learned; it is a beautiful object. By all means it belongs on the shelves of scholars and students of premodern Japanese religion and visual culture. One can tell I have the highest regard for the book, but inevitably I must offer a few quibbles in closing. There are some editing lapses in the book—mostly small things like “among” spelled “anong” or a text introduced as if for the first time when it had appeared in a prominent way previously.

One might note some inconsistency in the character glossary, which lists quite common terms where more obscure terms are passed over. An example is shabetsu chi’in (the wisdom seal of discernment), which does not appear while shinzô (god statue) or Jôdo shinshû (True Pure Land sect) do. While most readers interested in the glossary will be familiar with the latter terms, they might be curious to know the characters for the first if they are not used to mikkyô terminology. Also, why no comprehensive list of plates and figures? This seems like an odd decision, and one that makes the book harder to use. Finally, Bogel’s seeming understanding of the Nihon ryôiki as an ethnographically faithful description of popular attitudes toward Buddhist images during the Nara period seems uncharacteristically naïve. Perhaps I have overstated this last criticism; while at a few junctures in the text there are moves in the argument that might occasion a raised eyebrow from some, the book is stimulating, learned, and a pleasure to read. It is a rich presentation of Kûkai’s model of enlightenment by means “optical, somatic, and visionary” (39).