Hwansoo Ilmee Kim – författare

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.

Offers alternative approaches to the study of colonial and postcolonial Korean Buddhism, suggesting new directions for scholarship.New Perspectives in Modern Korean Buddhism moves beyond nationalistic, modernist, and ethnocentric historiographies of modern Korean Buddhism by carefully examining individuals' lived experiences, the institutional dimensions of Korean Buddhism, and its place in transnational conversations. Drawing upon rich archives as well as historical, anthropological, and literary approaches, the book examines four themes that have gained attention in recent years: perennial existential concerns and the persistent relevance of religious practice; the role of female Buddhists; clerical marriage and scandals; and engagement with secular society. The book reveals the limits of metanarratives, such as those of colonialism, nationalism, and modernity, in understanding the complex and contested identities of both monastics and laity, thus demanding that we diversify the methods by which we articulate the history of modern Korean Buddhism.