The Korean peninsula, throughout the Juseon dynasty, finds itself entangled in Chinese and Japanese spheres of influence. In fact, Kirk Larsen argues that Korean history in the 19th and 20th centuries is a story of “competing imperialisms,” with China, Japan, and even Tsarist Russia vying for influence and control on the peninsula1 Although these two centuries see more overt measures taken by China and Japan to exert control over Korea, their attempts to execute their own national agendas in the region were far from unprecedented. By the beginning of the 19th century, Korea has already been a cultural battleground for several hundred years.
Similarly to the way that China heavily influenced Korean culture through the proliferation of Neo-Confucianism throughout the beginning of the Joseon dynasty, the Meiji government leveraged the spread of Japanese Buddhism at the end of the same dynasty, looking to strengthen their cultural and political control in Korea before seizing control of the country in 1910.
During this pre-colonial period at the end of the 19th century, Buddhism was thriving in Japan. Hwansoo Ilmee Kim describes a distinct disparity between the welfare of Buddhism in Japan and the welfare of Buddhism in Korea through a historical anecdote dating to 1893.2 Yun Ch’iho, a Korean intellectual figure, attended that year’s World’s Parliament of Religion and recorded his interaction with two Japanese Buddhists who spoke very highly of their religion and argued for its spread elsewhere. He quotes one of the men, a Jōdoshinshū priest, as saying: “In Japan, everybody is a Buddhist. There is no field uncultivated. Hence we must occupy new lands.” Yun, on the other hand, thought of Buddhism as a “dying religion that had failed Eastern civilization.”
Yun’s opinion, that Buddhism was a “dying religion,” was not unfounded in Korea, as the religion’s popularity was on the decline, and it was looked down upon by the upper class — Korean monks were not allowed to speak to yangban, nor were they permitted through the gates of Seoul. Because the state of Buddhism in Korea is so poor, Japanese Buddhists turn to Korea for a the “foreign propagation” that they had been hoping for, with their final goal being the establishment of their sect of Buddhism as Korea’s state religion. Kim notes that this effort “took place parallel to Japan’s drive to gradually dominate Korea politically.”
Although not all missionary efforts were fueled by the Meiji government’s desire for influence on the Korean peninsula, most of them behaved in strict accordance with Japan’s political agenda. Christopher Ives explains that the Japanese Buddhist sectarian competition in Korea led to each sect consistently stressing their adherence to imperial orthodoxy in order to stay in the favor of the Japanese emperor and “maintain institutional privileges.”3
In the years before the implementation of Japanese colonial rule, the spread of Japanese Buddhism in Korea played an important role in solidifying Japan’s presence on the peninsula. Kim argues that Buddhism acted as “rich doctrinal, symbolic capital” within Korea that the Meiji government used to “mollify the anxiety of Koreans regarding Japan’s intentions.”2
Whether or not it was the goal of the individual Japense Buddhists involved in the late 19th century’s mass missionary activity in Korea, the movement significantly increased Japanese influence in the region and helped them gain a foothold that, at least marginally, catalyzed their colonial takeover in 1910.
- Larsen, Kirk W. “Competing Imperialisms in Korea” in Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History, (Routledge, 2016), pp. 27-37. [↩]
- Kim, Hwansoo Ilmee. Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2013. Ch 3 Japanese Buddhist Missions to Korea pp. 107-150. [↩] [↩]
- Ives, Christopher. “The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Modern Japan.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26, no. 1/2 (1999), pp. 83–106. [↩]