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Empire of the Dharma explores the dynamic relationship between
Korean and Japanese Buddhists in the years leading up to the
Japanese annexation of Korea. Conventional narratives cast this
relationship in politicized terms, with Korean Buddhists portrayed
as complicit in the "religious annexation" of the peninsula.
However, this view fails to account for the diverse visions,
interests, and strategies that drove both sides. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim
complicates this politicized account of religious interchange by
reexamining the "alliance" forged in 1910 between the Japanese Soto
sect and the Korean Wonjong order. The author argues that their
ties involved not so much political ideology as mutual benefit.
Both wished to strengthen Buddhism's precarious position within
Korean society and curb Christianity's growing influence. Korean
Buddhist monastics sought to leverage Japanese resources as a way
of advancing themselves and their temples, and missionaries of
Japanese Buddhist sects competed with one another to dominate
Buddhism on the peninsula. This strategic alliance pushed both
sides to confront new ideas about the place of religion in modern
society and framed the way that many Korean and Japanese Buddhists
came to think about the future of their shared religion.
In the first part of the twentieth century, Korean Buddhists,
despite living under colonial rule, reconfigured sacred objects,
festivals, urban temples, propagation-and even their own
identities-to modernize and elevate Korean Buddhism. By focusing on
six case studies, this book highlights the centrality of
transnational relationships in the transformation of colonial
Korean Buddhism. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim examines how Korean, Japanese,
and other Buddhists operating in colonial Korea, Japan, China,
Taiwan, Manchuria, and beyond participated in and were
significantly influenced by transnational forces, even as Buddhists
of Korea and other parts of Asia were motivated by nationalist and
sectarian interests. More broadly, the cases explored in the The
Korean Buddhist Empire reveal that, while Japanese Buddhism exerted
the most influence, Korean Buddhism was (as Japanese Buddhism was
itself) deeply influenced by developments in China, Taiwan, Sri
Lanka, Europe, and the United States, as well as by Christianity.
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