As a university student in the early 1970s, little did Katsuyoshi Sanematsu know that picking up a Carlos Castaneda book would propel him on a nearly three-decade odyssey culminating in the publication this month of the first exhaustive account of Mayan shamanism by a Japanese scholar.
In a recent interview, Sanematsu, 52, an associate professor at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, said his new book, "Maya bunmei seinaru jikan no sho" ("The Mayan Book of Sacred Time"), published by Gendai Shorin, was a labor of love.
The book vividly documents his discoveries of hidden Mayan knowledge over a period of six years in the Quiche (pronounced KEE-chay) region of the southwestern Guatemalan highlands -- the Mayan heartland of Central America -- and interviews with prominent shamans there.