Shaku Unshō in Korea: The Buddhist Precepts and Colonialism in Modern East Asia

Abstract

In this article, I will examine the engagement of two precept-upholding monks, Shaku Unshō and his disciple, Tanaka Seijun, with the notion of “Korean Buddhism.” Disaffected by the decadence surrounding Japanese Buddhism, in 1906 Unshō and Seijun traveled to Korea, seeking an ideal Buddhism in what became Japan’s new protectorate after the Russo-Japanese War. Existing scholarship on Japanese Buddhism has emphasized its disregard for the precepts. Meanwhile, post-World War II Korean Buddhists sought to reform Korean Buddhism by associating it with priests who observed monastic precepts. Japanese Buddhism and Korean Buddhism were therefore associated with breaking and adhering to the precepts, respectively, and the boundaries between them were discursively produced during Japan’s colonization of Korea. The article both details the origins and complicates the simple contrast which is often drawn between these two Buddhisms. I argue that Unshō and Seijun used the idea of Buddhism’s supposed degeneracy in Korea to redirect the criticism of their contemporaries in Japan. By the time of the Russo-Japanese War, the precept-oriented vision associated with Unshō, in particular, had made these priests object of deep skepticism in Japan, but Korea provided a new stage for the realization of their ideal Buddhism. Unshō and Seijun’s deployment of narratives regarding reformation and regeneration around Buddhism demonstrates how modern religious dynamics in East Asia revolved around these precepts.