{"id":1646,"date":"2025-10-31T12:50:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T12:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/?p=1646"},"modified":"2025-10-31T12:50:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T12:50:57","slug":"navigating-the-grey-zone-buddhist-adaptation-and-critique-in-modern-east-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/2025\/10\/navigating-the-grey-zone-buddhist-adaptation-and-critique-in-modern-east-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating the Grey Zone: Buddhist Adaptation and Critique in Modern East Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, East Asia was reshaped by the forces of modernity. The rise of the nation-state and Social Darwinism, which framed international relations as a brutal struggle for survival, challenged traditional societies.1<\/a><\/sup> Within this environment, East Asian Buddhist traditions confronted an existential crisis, widely dismissed by modernisers as “superstitious and useless for national survival”.2<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 In response, Buddhist thinkers adopted a pragmatic strategy of navigating a “grey zone” between outright collaboration and futile resistance.3<\/a><\/sup> This was not a passive position but an active space of negotiation and critical engagement. Through this approach, they sought to ensure the survival of their tradition while safeguarding its ethical core, strategically appropriating modern ideologies and repurposing their own transcendent ideals to critique state power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is exemplified by the Korean monk Han Yong\u2019un (1879\u20131944). Recognising that Buddhism had to prove its relevance against rivals like Protestant Christianity, Han borrowed from the Chinese reformer Liang Qichao. He used Liang’s argument that Western evolutionary theories were inherent in the Buddhist principle of cause and effect.4<\/a><\/sup> However, his critical innovation was his refusal to fully surrender to Social Darwinism’s harsh logic. While acknowledging its descriptive power in the material world, he subordinated it as a provisional, lesser truth, ultimately subordinate to the higher, universal ethics of Buddhism. For Han, the “survival of the fittest” was a phase in a larger spiritual evolution whose ultimate end was a world of transcendental equality and peace.5<\/a><\/sup> This philosophical framework provided a moral foundation to withstand the coercive pressures of Japanese imperialism.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

A parallel, yet distinct, strategy emerged in Japan, where secular intellectuals wielded Buddhist concepts as instruments of political critique. Here, the strategy was not to subordinate a modern ideology but to weaponise a traditional Buddhist ideal itself. The modern distinction between inner belief and outer practice allowed these thinkers to approach Buddhism as a philosophy, rather than a faith. They utilised the resources in the tradition’s transcendent visions, particularly\u00a0 Pure Land. This is a transcendent realm defined not by what it possesses, but by the absence of suffering. Thinkers like Ienaga Sabur\u014d recognised in this ideal a form of “negative thinking”.7<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 By envisioning a perfect world defined only by what it was not<\/em> (i.e., not full of suffering), the Pure Land concept provided a moral standard from which to judge and “negate” the existing political order.8<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 The use of Buddhist concepts by Japanese leftists thus contained a profound irony. While the institutional Buddhist establishment often aligned with the state, secular intellectuals adopted the same tradition to uncover a radical, critical philosophy. This highlights a key division in modern Buddhism where the ‘grey zone’ could be a space for state collaboration for some, and a source of state negation for others, all within the same national and religious context. Thus, a traditional Buddhist image was transformed into a philosophical foundation for challenging the Japanese state’s rising totalitarianism.9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In conclusion, East Asian Buddhism navigated the challenges of modernity by operating within a strategic “grey zone.” Whether by domesticating Social Darwinism within a Buddhist framework in Korea or by radicalising utopian ideals from within the tradition in Japan, thinkers discovered a path to ensure their tradition’s continuity. Their collective legacy is one of intellectual agility, demonstrating that strategic engagement, not isolation, was key to preserving an ancient tradition’s critical relevance in a modernising world.<\/p>\n

  1. Tikhonov, V, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings (1880s-1910s),<\/em> (Leiden, 2010), p.134 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Ibid, p.117 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Schickentanz, Erik, ‘Forum Introduction. The Chrysanthemum, the sword, and the dharmakcakra: Buddhist Entanglements in Japan’s wartime empire (1931-1945’, Modern Asian Studies, <\/em>58: 6 (2024), pp.1460-1464 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Tikhonov, V, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea<\/em>, p.123 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Ibid, p.114 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Ibid, p.135 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Curley, Mellissa A.M, Pure Land, Real World: Modern Buddhism, Japanese Leftists, and the Utopian Imagination<\/em>, (Honolulu, 2017), p.16 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Ibid. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  9. Ibid, p.6 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, East Asia was reshaped by the forces of modernity. The rise of the nation-state and Social Darwinism, which framed international relations as a brutal struggle for survival, challenged traditional societies.1 Within this environment, East Asian Buddhist traditions confronted an existential crisis, widely dismissed by modernisers as “superstitious … Continue reading “Navigating the Grey Zone: Buddhist Adaptation and Critique in Modern East Asia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1658,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions\/1658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}