This book presents an excellent and well-balanced presentation of Japanese monastic warriors based completely on primary and secondary sources. To my knowledge, it's the first work to present a trustworthy picture of who the monastic warriors of medieval Japan were, what the social context was in which they lived, the factors that played a role in establishing the currently held inaccurate image of them, how this image was able to survive in Japan and elsewhere until today and why it is still so powerful that until recently Japanese scholarship (despite the fact that according to the author the truth is there for everyone to see inside the primary documents) hasn't been able to dismantle it. Most interestingly, the author comes to his conclusions by systematically and thoroughly, although the author himself admits not comprehensively (which I believe, in this case, isn't adversely influencing the results of the research), analyzing the mistakes in the interpretation of primary sources by the Japanese academic world thusfar. A possible explanation for the fact that Japanese scholarship has sustained the inaccurate image of monastic warriors for so long is being given, and convincingly at that, as well as some recent attempts within Japanese academe at reconsideration of established views by a reinterpretation of primary sources. Besides all of this, the book contains a wonderful bibliography as well as excellent notes including Japanese characters that enable the interested reader to explore further. Well, to put it in a single frase, I strongly feel that this book is the product of excellent, first-rate scholarship and would therefore like to recommend it highly to anyone interested in the subject.