Asian history scholar Smits (Pennsylvania State U.) covers the history of understanding of earthquakes in Japan by tracing the prologue and response to the Ansei Edo earthquake of 1855. In the first half, the prior general understanding of earthquakes is presented, including their proximal and distant causes, predictive power, and religious and political implications. The book then turns to the Ansei Edo earthquake, which stood out anomalously from the prevailing paradigms. The ensuing reconstruction of meaning and search for new explanations of earthquakes is explored in the second half, all the way up through twenty-first century responses to remarkable seismic phenomena in Japan. Annotation ©2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)