Book excerpt: Mediated by Gifts is a collection of essays by top scholars on gifts, giving and the social and political forces that shaped these practices in medieval and early modern Japan. The international assemblage of authors provides new insights into these deeply ingrained practices. The essays focus on topics such as shogunal visits to shrines and temples, exchanges between the imperial house and the shogun, a physician and his patients, the shogun, his vassals his and his ladies, the merchant class and the shogunal government, and between scholars and their cosmopolitan circle of contacts. This virtually unexplored view of Japanese history provides new tools to better elucidate both historical and modern Japan. Contributors are Lee Butler, Andrew Goble, Kaneko Hiraku, Laura Nenzi, Ozawa Emiko, Cecilia Segawa Siegle, and Margarita Winkel.