by Hwansoo Kim (Duke University)
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
The USC Center for Japanese Religions and
Culture is pleased to present
a lecture by Professor Hwansoo Kim, Duke
University on Thursday, April
25, 2013. Please be so kind as to forward this
announcement to any
students or colleagues who you feel may be interested in
joining us.
Thank you!
Thursday, April 25, 2013
5:00 PM to 6:30
PM
East Asian Seminar Room (110C), Doheny Memorial Library,
USC
Korea’s Jōdōshinshū: Lay Monk Villages in Colonial Korea
(1910-1945)
- CJRC Lecture Series -
ABSTRACT
A newspaper
editorial from 1930s colonial Korea characterized the
isolated villages of
married Buddhist monks spread across the northern
border between Korea and
China as “the mystery of the century”. These
lay monk villages (K.
jaega-seung burak or Jp. zaikeso) existed from the
seventeenth century until
the 1960s. The males in these villages shaved
their heads and had wives and
children, and they ranged in number from
thousands to tens of thousands at
their peak. These lay monks and their
families comprised the descendents of
the Jurchens, an ethnic group from
northern China who migrated to Korea and
later mixed with Koreans.
In this presentation, based on previous
scholarship and on untapped
primary sources, he would like to take up two
questions. First, how did
these villagers come to take on a monastic identity
(or, at minimum, the
appellation)? Second, how should we understand the
history of these
communities within the context of Korean Buddhism? While
scholars
conventionally understanding the origin of this monastic identity
as
coincidental and unauthentic, he argues that Korean monks fleeing
or
relocating as a result of Choson Korea’s anti-Buddhist policies
perhaps
contributed to the formation of a monastic identity of the males
in
these villages. Finally, he will address how the Neo-Confucian
Choson
dynasty, imperial Japan, and North Korean authorities politicized
these
communities for their own purposes. These lay monk communities were
an
unusual manifestation of Korean Buddhism and as such force us
to
consider what, and who, defines Korean Buddhism and
monastic.
BIOGRAPHY
Hwansoo Kim, Duke University
Hwansoo
Kim is an assistant professor at Duke University in the field
of Korean
Buddhism and culture with the departments of Religion and
Asian & Middle
Eastern Studies. He received his doctorate from Harvard
University in 2007,
followed by a post-doctoral appointment with the
Harvard Reischauer
Institute. He then taught Japanese religions as an
assistant professor at the
University of Arizona. Kim’s most recent
article is “A Buddhist Christmas:
The Buddha’s Birthday Festival in
Colonial Korea (1928–1945).” He is the
author of Empire of the Dharma:
Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912
(Harvard Asia Press, 2012).
More details about him at
http://religiondepartment.duke.edu/people?Gurl=/aas/Religion&Uil=hwansoo.kim&subpage=profile
**
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to
cjrc@dornsife.usc.edu
**
Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
USC Dornsife College
of Letters, Arts and Sciences
825 Bloom Walk, ACB 130D
Los Angeles, CA
90089-1481
Tel. (213) 821-4365
