Efficacious Underworld: The Evolution of Ten Kings Paintings in Medieval China and Korea by Cheeyun Lilian Kwon (review)

Through a multifaceted and in-depth examination of the Ten Kings scrolls in the collection of the Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, Cheeyun Kwon’s monograph offers a comprehensive and useful exploration of the cult of the Ten Kings and their images from their origins in medieval times in East Asia. Focusing on the Seikadō Ten Kings scrolls, Efficacious Underworld examines the history of Ten Kings images through the complex geography of East Asian ritual practices. The book is a delightful contribution to the field of Buddhist studies as well as East Asian art history. Since the publication of Stephen Teiser’s The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism in 1994,¹ only a few English monographs have been written about the study of the Ten Kings. Kwon’s book broadens our understanding of Ten Kings worship by illuminating its spread to the Korean Peninsula and the new types of paintings that it engendered during the Koryŏ dynasty (高麗, 918–1392).

Efficacious Underworld consists of three parts subdivided into ten chapters. The relatively short length of each chapter helps readers easily digest the book despite its complicated contents. The book’s first two parts trace the origin of Ten Kings paintings in China and the development of the Ten Kings cult in Koryŏ. They prepare the reader for Kwon’s careful analyses of the Seikadō Ten Kings scrolls, which are presented in the last part of the book. The Seikadō scrolls have been a conundrum for art historians. Among the surviving paintings of the Ten Kings in East Asia, the Seikadō set is the most complicated one in terms of the number of kings’ retainers and the intricate details. At the same time, the Seikadō paintings exhibit many characteristics that are not shared by typical paintings of the Ten Kings produced in East Asia, which makes them difficult to securely locate in the history of East Asian Ten Kings paintings. Prior to Kwon’s study, scholars suggested provenances for the Seikadō Ten Kings scrolls as diverse as early Ming (明, 1368–1644), Yuan (元, 1279–1368), and Koryŏ.

Through extensive interregional research and an interdisciplinary approach, Efficacious Underworld contends that the Seikadō Ten Kings are works from the mid Koryŏ period that reflect painting styles transmitted from the Northern Song (960–1127). Kwon’s arguments are built upon her deep knowledge of Buddhist and secular paintings, including landscape and figure paintings, as well as medieval Chinese and Korean Buddhist ritual practices. Having received her PhD from Princeton University, which boasts a strong tradition in the history of Chinese painting, Kwon’s analyses of the landscape and flower motifs included in the Seikadō Ten Kings are unusually insightful and profound, adding to the strength of her arguments. Based on her examination of the paintings’ composition, iconography, and style, Kwon reveals that the Seikadō Ten Kings adopted various motifs and styles from China but included many modifications added during the Koryǒ period.

Among hundreds of Ten Kings images that Kwon examines in her study, the work that is most useful for illuminating the Seikadō paintings’ link with Koryŏ is the illustrations from a scripture in the collection of Haeinsa 海印寺. Entitled The Scripture Spoken by the Buddha on Preparing the Ten Kings Ritual for Rebirth after Seven Days (佛說預修十王生七經), the scripture and its illustrations were published in woodblock print in 1246 under the patronage of Chŏng An (鄭晏, ?-1251), an official of Koryŏ. Made as a supplement to the Second Koryŏ Tripitika, it is the earliest known woodblock rendition of this scripture. Its illustrations show characteristics unprecedented in Chinese paintings but shared by the Seikadō Ten Kings, suggesting a clear link between the Seikadō scroll and Koryŏ.

The first part of Efficacious Underworld, entitled “Evolution of Ten Kings Paintings in China,” consists of four short chapters. Chapter one, “Images of the Ten...