Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912 by Hwansoo Ilmee Kim (review)

Empire of the Dharma is a masterful and fascinating book that smashes to pieces the dominant black-and-white historiographical narratives produced in South Korea on the pre-colonial and colonial period. This well-written and meticulous work reverses nationalist discourses that analyze Korean Buddhism merely as a victim of colonial imperialist policies and which classify Buddhist actors into opposite camps of heroes and traitors. The author, Hwansoo Kim (aka Ilmee Sŭnim), since 2009 assistant professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, is a remarkable historian who has succeeded in allowing the reader to “enter into the complexity” of the rich 1877–1912 period. He demonstrates convincingly that Korean Buddhism benefited more from the colonial regime than did Japanese Buddhist missions of the Four Buddhist Sects (Ōtani-ha, Nichirenshū, Jōdoshū, Sōtōshū). Besides, in a corrosive and iconoclastic way, Kim reconsiders the role of such emblematic figures as Han Yongun (1879–1944), Takeda Hanshi (1863–1911), Yi Hoegwang (1862–1933). More than this, he reinforces the idea that the 1911 Temple Ordinance provided paradoxically favorable conditions for modernizing Korean Buddhism and enabling Korean Buddhists to “assert their independence and distinctive identity from Japanese Buddhism” (p. 357).

The book consists of seven chapters that deal with the period beginning in 1877, the year Okumura Enshin (1843–1913) opened the first Japanese temple in Pusan, and ending in mid-1912, when Governor-general Terauchi Masatake (1852–1919) promulgated the enforcement of the 1911 Temple Ordinance that segregated Japanese and Korea Buddhisms. Chapters progress chronologically, analyzing the social, religious, political and institutional contexts and the complex interplay between actors identified at different levels: states and their representatives, sects or branches, and individuals. Periodization and division in chapters is reflective of transitional events, such as the state’s attempts to control Buddhist sects, temples and missionary activities in 1902 (Korean Temple Ordinance), 1906 (Regulations on Religion), and 1911 (Temple Ordinance) as well as the 1912 enforcement of the 1911 Ordinance, but also reflects the contacts without state interference between the two Buddhisms that culminated in the Shōtōshū-Wŏnjong Alliance of 1910.

Chapter One consists of a historical contextualization of both Korean and Japanese Buddhism. Both Buddhisms experienced State persecution during the Chosŏn and the early Meiji (1868–1874) periods, respectively. Recognition by the state in such ways as instrumentalization appears as a key factor in attaining high-social standing, and the bureaucratization and prosperity of Buddhism. In this respect, Korean and Japanese Buddhism were in a very contrasting situation, since they had opposite social statuses. Financial, educational and political resources were on the side of Japanese priests, though Korea (i.e., Paekche) had the prestige of having been the motherland of Japanese Buddhism, which implied a gratitude needing reciprocation. Despite their differences, they shared traditions and an identity as Buddhists.

Chapter Two explores three different attitudes Japanese Buddhist missionaries had toward others Asians. In Korea, Kim analyzes personal encounters between the two Buddhist countries through individual cases: Okumura Enshin (Higashi Honganji), Katō Bunkyō (Nichiren) and Shaku Unshō (Shingon, Risshū). In the late nineteenth century, while missionaries asserted sectarian identities, Korean monks, despite the lack of an institutional identity as the result of the state’s disestablishment of Korean Buddhism in the Chosŏn period, had a clear understanding of Sŏn as supreme (above sutra studies and chanting) and did not set up any sectarian distinctions. Both considered the revitalization of Korean Buddhism and joining forces against Christianity as common and urgent objectives.

The next chapter looks closely at the work of the four most active Japanese Buddhist sects in Korea in the period (Japanese Buddhism had twelve sects and more than thirty branches at the time). In particular, Kim paints a nuanced and living portrait of the Nichiren priest Sano Zenrei (1859–1912), who succeeded temporarily (1895–1898) in removing the ancient and symbolic anti...