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The Oriental Monk Goes Virtual Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American Popular Culture by Jane Naomi Iwamura. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 198 pages. $24.95 paperback.
Jane Naomi Iwamura delivers an enormously important and insightful examination of America's fascination with Asian religions in her book Virtual Orientalism. With careful and detailed analysis, Iwamura offers a cultural history of the representation of Asian religions in die media. The book argues that the mass awareness of Asian religions by most Americans has been ushered in by die advent of visually oriented mass media. The visual element creates a kind of virtual existence, where "orientalized stereotypes begin to take on their own reality and justify their own truths" (6). This, Iwamura argues, is a new kind of orientalism, a concept she calls virtual orientalism. At the center of her analysis is what Iwamura calls "the Oriental Monk," a figure who is now ubiquitous in American popular culture. The Oriental Monk is represented as a mysterious, otherworldly Asian sage who passes his Eastern wisdom to his dedicated, Western male pupil. Importandy, the icon is not so much about Asian religions as it is about Americans. Iwamura tells us that the Oriental Monk becomes for Americans a "figure of dranslation" - a convenient symbol for alternative spiritualities and modes of being; he is a figure upon whom "we project our assumptions, fears and hopes" (4) .
In clear and stunningly elegant prose, Dr. Iwamura provides a genealogy of die Oriental Monk tiirough three key figures: D. T Suzuki and the 1950s Zen boom; the Yogi Maharishi Mahesh and his celebrity followers in the 1960s; and Kwai Chang Caine in the popular 1970s television series, Rung Eu (starring David Carradine). The media representations of Suzuki, the Maharishi, and Kwai Chang Caine reflect distinct moments in mass media and in American social and political history.
Iwamura argues that the popular narrative and image of the Oriental Monk merge in the 1950s through the representative figure of D. T Suzuki, the Japanese Zen scholar who travels to...