식민지 조선의 황도불교와 공(空)의 정치학

Abstract

This paper deals with the process in which Korean Buddhism internalized and theorized the so-called Imperial-Way Buddhism, a.k.a. Kodo Bukyo of Japan as an attempt to align itself with the Japanese imperialism during the colonial period. In doing so, this paper concentrated on analyzing certain roles of particular Buddhist theories. Some Buddhist intellectuals of Japan at that time tried to resolve the conventional rupture between Buddhism and war, by incorporating the highly philosophical Buddhist theory of Śūnyatā, that is, emptiness into something much less religious or philosophical. This could be the example in which the most typically Buddhist theory being used in non-Buddhist, political activities. Modern Japanese Buddhism considered the protection of Japanese nation that was identified with the Japanese emperor as the protection of Buddhism itself. It could be said that the state and the emperor were viewed as something religious and sacred, and in reverse, the Buddhism was becoming secularized. Similar logic was accepted in colonial Korea. In dealing with the question of nation and individual, the Buddhist doctrine of anatman (literally, no-self) was deployed in the way that encouraged people to negate the individual completely to serve the Japanese empire and the emperor. It went so far as to demand the soldiers who were drafted in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War to transcend the question of life and death by drawing on the logic of emptiness. The Buddhist theory of emptiness that urged people to be free from any ideologies including political ideologies, for they are mere illusions, and attain spiritual peace was politicized in such manners.