IKELS, Charlotte, ed., FILIALPIETY: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2004, 304pp., $21.95 softcover.The purpose of this book is to bring together the best research into the past, present and future of filial piety in contemporary East Asia. Following an introduction by Charlotte Ikels, eleven experts provide chapters on ritualistic co-residence and the weakening of filial piety in rural China; filial daughters and filial sons or comparisons from rural North China; the meaning of meal rotation and filial piety; living alone and the rural elderly in China; filial piety and death rituals in contemporary Guangzhou Province; filial obligations in Chinese families and paradoxes of modernization; the transformation of filial piety in contemporary South Korea; filial piety in contemporary urban Southeast Korea; the disempowerment of youth in Japan and how this relates to filial piety; filial piety vs. marriage among rural Japanese; and great-grandparenthood in urban Japan. Also included is a glossary of terms, notes, references, and valuable tables and figures, but also excellent photographs to illustrate some chapters. Many chapters include extensive and fascinating case studies of villages and elders in addition to historical overviews as well as rural and urban comparisons.Ikels points out that there is a tremendous amount of interest in and thirst for knowledge about filial piety among western scholars and researchers. What 1 found extremely fascinating about this book is that westerners, generally speaking, have a traditional and super-simplified understanding of filial piety, one that is lacking in all the subtle shades of meaning that are represented by the expert authors of this book. Ikels also points out that there is not now, nor has there ever been, one single version or type of filial piety that has characterized all of East Asia or even single nations. She says. Rather, we argue that beyond a shared core of understandings the actual practice of filial piety, both its delivery and its receipt, is situationally dependent and shaped by local circumstances of history, economics, social organization, and demography and by personal circumstances of wealth, gender and family configuration. [p. 2]Ikels initially defines filial piety as the support of one's parents and points out that unfilial behavior consists of laziness, gambling, drinking to excess, selfishness, disgracing the family and the ancestors, and endangering one's parents through fights and warfare. There are many motivators to encourage filial piety on the part of children, including tradition, upbringing, self-interest [you want your own children to respect and support you in your old age], obedience, and moral sanctions. It is interesting to note that in the past, filial piety was the concern of everyone in the community, in that if a child murdered a parent, the child was beheaded and his body mutilated, neighbors to the right and left of his home were severely punished, his principal teacher in school was killed and even the district magistrate of the village would be stripped of his office and disgraced. The ultimate sanction that parents can use to threaten their children is suicide, a very powerful weapon that brings down the displeasure of the ancestors on the family and the village.Ikels and these researchers point out that there are a number of forces that are changing filial piety today: population dynamics, modernization [parents earning their own money so they live alone and buy their own food/drinks/cigarettes without having ask their children or live under their children's roofs], and the role of the state in counteracting tradition filial piety sentiment. One author points out that exceedingly high suicide rates in those 65+ in East Asia do not support the commonly held view that the elderly in the East Asian system are better off than their more independent western counterparts. …