규장각 해외 한국학 저자특강 시리즈 제4강 개최
안녕하세요,
규장각한국학연구원에서 <해외 한국학 저자특강 시리즈: 제4강>을 개최합니다.
제목: Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”
일시: 2022년 6월 24일 금요일, 10:00 - 12:00
저자: Sujung Kim (드포대학)
사회: 권성연 (알버타대학/규장각한국학연구원)
토론: 허남린 (UBC), Max Moerman (바너드칼리지)
본 특강은 영어로 진행되는 온라인 행사입니다. 사전등록 링크를 통해 참가신청을 해주시면 행사 하루 전에 Zoom 접속링크를 보내드립니다.
기타 문의사항은 icks@snu.ac.kr (Tel. 02-880-9378)로 연락주시기 바랍니다.
Dear All,
The International Center for Korean Studies of the Kyujanggak Institute is hosting a Book Talk series, introducing Sujung Kim’s Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”.
About the Author:
Sujung Kim is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at DePauw University. Her chief research field is Japanese Buddhism of the medieval period with a focus on transcultural interactions between Japanese and Korean Buddhism. Her interdisciplinary research interests also include Buddhist visual and material culture, as well as performative aspects of Buddhist narratives. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 2014 (with distinction) and her M.A. in Buddhist Philosophy from Korea University in 2007. She joined the DePauw faculty in 2014 and since then she has taught a wide range of courses on Buddhism and East Asian religions. Her first monograph, Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean,” (University of Hawaii Press, 2019) is not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese religion. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of Buddhist deities. Currently, Sujung is working on her second book project tentatively titled, Korean Magical Medicine: Buddhist Healing Talismans in Choson Korea, which she investigates the religious, historical, and iconographic dimensions of healing talismans produced in Buddhist settings during the Choson period. Although its primary focus is Korean talismans, the book also locates itself in the broader East Asian context, aiming at showing the complex web of talismanic culture in East Asia.
About the Book:
This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity Shinra Myōjin, the “god of Silla” worshipped in medieval Japanese Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myōjin as a protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its worship emerged and developed in the complex networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” – a “quality” rather than a physical space defined by Kim as the primary conduit for cross-cultural influence in a region that includes the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the East China Sea, and neighboring coastal areas.
While focusing on the transcultural worship of the deity, Kim engages the different maritime arrangements in which Shinra Myōjin circulated:
- first, the network of Korean immigrants, Chinese merchants, and Japanese Buddhist monks in China’s Shandong peninsula and Japan’s Ōmi Province; and
- second, that of gods found in the East Asian Mediterranean.
Both of these networks became nodal points of exchange of both goods and gods. Kim’s examination of temple chronicles, literary writings, and iconography reveals Shinra Myōjin’s evolution from a seafaring god to a multifaceted one whose roles included the god of pestilence and of poetry, the insurer of painless childbirth, and the protector of performing arts.
Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” is not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese religion.
Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” is not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese religion.
Unlike other recent studies on individual Buddhist deities, it foregrounds the need to approach them within a broader East Asian context. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of Buddhist deities.
The event will be held online via Zoom. The link for Zoom meeting will be sent a day before the event after your registration is confirmed (register here).
Please contact icks@snu.ac.kr (Tel. 02-880-9378) for more information.
The event will be held online via Zoom. The link for Zoom meeting will be sent a day before the event after your registration is confirmed (register here).
Please contact icks@snu.ac.kr (Tel. 02-880-9378) for more information.
===
SHINRA MYŌJIN AND BUDDHIST NETWORKS OF THE EAST ASIAN “MEDITERRANEAN”
Sujung Kim
SHINRA MYŌJIN AND BUDDHIST NETWORKS OF THE EAST ASIAN “MEDITERRANEAN”
Sujung Kim
Hardback: $80.00
Published: November 2019
Paperback: $28.00
Published: October 2020
===
See all formats and editions
- Kindle$104.96
- Hardcover$133.69
- Paperback A$21.25
194 pages | 10 b&w illustrations, 2 maps
ABOUT THE BOOK
This ambitious work offers a transnational account of the deity Shinra Myōjin, the “god of Silla” worshipped in medieval Japanese Buddhism from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Sujung Kim challenges the long-held understanding of Shinra Myōjin as a protective deity of the Tendai Jimon school, showing how its worship emerged and developed in the complex networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean”—a “quality” rather than a physical space defined by Kim as the primary conduit for cross-cultural influence in a region that includes the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan (East Sea), the East China Sea, and neighboring coastal areas. While focusing on the transcultural worship of the deity, Kim engages the different maritime arrangements in which Shinra Myōjin circulated: first, the network of Korean immigrants, Chinese merchants, and Japanese Buddhist monks in China’s Shandong peninsula and Japan’s Ōmi Province; and second, that of gods found in the East Asian Mediterranean. Both of these networks became nodal points of exchange of both goods and gods. Kim’s examination of temple chronicles, literary writings, and iconography reveals Shinra Myōjin’s evolution from a seafaring god to a multifaceted one whose roles included the god of pestilence and of poetry, the insurer of painless childbirth, and the protector of performing arts.
Shinra Myōjin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” is not only the first monograph in any language on the Tendai Jimon school in Japanese Buddhism, but also the first book-length study in English to examine Korean connections in medieval Japanese religion. Unlike other recent studies on individual Buddhist deities, it foregrounds the need to approach them within a broader East Asian context. By shifting the paradigm from a land-centered vision to a sea-centered one, the work underlines the importance of a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to the study of Buddhist deities.
===
In her provocative study, Sujung Kim seeks to recover a medieval Japanese mythic imagination surrounding Korea by examining the curious figure of Shinra Myōjin, a deity whose name points squarely to the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla. Adopting as her framework the East Asian “Mediterranean” . . . she challenges our habitually landlocked view of Japan as an isolated entity and forces us to grapple with the ways that maritime interactions with and images of the continent shaped premodern Japanese Buddhism. . . . Kim should be commended for effectively utilizing a limited evidence base to craft an innovative study that opens new avenues of inquiry.
—Andrew Macomber, Oberlin College, Monumenta Nipponica, 75:2 (2020)
Kim’s maritime approach takes a bold stand in its refusal to read modern, national boundaries, and the geopolitical borders and institutional parameters of Asian Studies, onto the complexities of a rich sociocultural network that spanned seas, transcended languages, and spread across vast distances. . . . [Her] work takes a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach that should be of interest to any scholar, regardless of discipline, who is committed to rethinking East Asia in regional and maritime (rather than misleading and anachronistic national) terms. . . . Kim’s ambit [is] to “overcome the more commonplace Japan-centric view of medieval Japanese religion.” In this, she has succeeded remarkably, and in record time, with an efficient and brisk writing style.
—Charlotte Eubanks, Pennsylvania State University, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 141:2 (2021)
Sujung Kim has written an outstanding study of a transregional deity that is conceptualized within a framework of maritime connectivity between Korea and Japan. Her analysis of textual and art historical sources is superb. She not only offers insight into the circulation and transformation of Buddhist ideas, but also proposes new ways of examining translocal diffusion of religious ideas. This book is a major contribution to the field of maritime interactions in the East China Sea and more broadly to the study of intra-Asian connections. It adds to the understanding of the transmission of Buddhism across Asia, interactions between Korea and Japan during the medieval period, as well as to the complexities of cross-cultural intercourse and influences.
—Tansen Sen, New York University Shanghai
This is a refreshing and insightful look at medieval Japan’s social and religious milieu. The syncretistic amalgamation of various religious figures—buddhas, bodhisattvas, kami, devas, and others—is often seen as a particularly Japanese phenomenon. And yet without denying its distinctive Japanese flavor, the author shows that this brew is an international and multicultural mix, including deities from India, China, and Korea that are transformed in a new context. The image of an “East Asian Mediterranean” is especially useful in understanding medieval Japanese religion and culture from a broader geographical and social perspective.
—Paul L. Swanson, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture
In a work that is ground-breaking in many ways, Sujung Kim investigates the identity and role of the deity Shinra Myōjin in the Jimon tradition of Japanese Tendai. Primary source material on the subject is sparse: Kim acknowledges this problem and analyzes her subject in a multidisciplinary fashion, utilizing several theoretical perspectives coherently and convincingly. Although some scholars may question aspects of her analysis, challenges are to be expected in a book that is this innovative and thought-provoking.
—Paul Groner, professor emeritus, University of Virginia
Kim’s approach to presenting the development of the character of Shinra Myōjin in Japanese religious lore is equally innovative and fascinating. She challenges the customary notion concerning this widely worshipped divinity that he was a Korean deity who simply decided to move over to Japan in order to protect a Japanese Buddhist tradition. Instead, Kim takes pains to reveal “the sociocultural and mythological networks within which this deity was embedded.” Furthermore, she maintains that this network ought to be conceived as being beyond the national and cultural boundaries of Korea and Japan.
—Lehel Balogh, Hokkaido University, Religious Studies Review, 46:4 (December 2020)
As this study shows, Shinra Myōjin is an extremely complex and enigmatic figure. By placing this deity in the context of the various, often overlapping, economic, political and cultural networks, Kim has succeeded in providing us with both a rich and nuanced view of the various roles played by Shinra Myōjin and new insights into the ways in which the religious imagination functioned in medieval Japan. It is without doubt an exciting new addition to the scholarly literature on Japanese religions.
—Robert F. Rhodes, Otani University, Kyoto, Journal of Religion in Japan, 10:1 (March 2021)
Indeed, Kim shows us how consideration of a particular deity can revolutionize the history of a particular sect, as the Tendai Jimon have been vastly understudied when compared to the Tendai Sanmon. Her monograph also demonstrates how multidisciplinary approaches can provide useful tools for considering topics in which source material is sparse . . . [T]he text is invaluable to scholars of Japanese religions in adding complexity and richness to the medieval religious landscape, acknowledging and exploring the networks of the East Asian Mediterranean, and contributing to our growing knowledge of the role of deities in Japanese religious history.
—Emily B. Simpson, Dartmouth College, Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University, Vol. 6 (2021)
===
Top review from the United States
Crazy Fox
5.0 out of 5 stars "One of many expedient manifestations"
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
Tucked away in the back of the iconography guides I brought back with me from Japan many years ago can be found obscure and apparently anomalous deities like Shinra Myojin, accompanied at best with a few cryptic lines of text that raise questions and pique the imagination more than anything else. Whenever I've daydreamed about what a detailed monograph deep-diving into one of these divine unidentifieds would be like, the resulting ideal is at least closely matched if not indeed exceeded by this excellent study.
An extensively researched and carefully argued book such as this resists facile summarization in a short review, but overall each chapter with its own well-defined focus functions together with the others in wave after wave to effectively flip the script, as it were--taking a supposedly minor deity and surfacing major insights into medieval Japanese religious culture thereby (not to mention wider literary implications, including Noh performing arts), in the process underlining the key significance of the relatively understudied Jimon tradition of Tendai along the way. Anchoring all of this is the seemingly simple yet profound perception shift involved in rethinking the bodies of water surrounding the Japanese archipelago, Korean peninsula, and east coast of China as conduits of contact and intercommunication rather than as barriers and borders (that suspiciously mirror the divisions between academic specializations). I'm not totally convinced that "East Asian 'Mediterranean'" as a term is the most elegant encapsulation of this crucial methodological insight, but I'd be the last one to argue with the results. As it turns out, no god is an island.
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Sujung Kim, "Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian 'Mediterranean'" (U Hawaii Press, 2020): Kim offers a fascinating study of the transcultural underpinnings of Medieval East Asian Buddhist traditions with an emphasis on Shinra Myōjin, a deity integral to the institutional development of the Medieval Japanese Tendai faction, the Jimon...
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Sujung Kim, "Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian 'Mediterranean'" (U Hawaii Press, 2020): Kim offers a fascinating study of the transcultural underpinnings of Medieval East Asian Buddhist traditions with an emphasis on Shinra Myōjin, a deity integral to the institutional development of the Medieval Japanese Tendai faction, the Jimon...
FromNew Books in Buddhist Studies
up votes, mark as like0
0down votes, mark as dislike
85 minutes
Description
Shinra Myojin and Buddhist Networks of the East Asian “Mediterranean” (University of Hawaii Press, 2020) is a fascinating study of the transcultural underpinnings of Medieval East Asian Buddhist traditions with an emphasis on Shinra Myōjin, a deity integral to the institutional development of the Medieval Japanese Tendai faction, the Jimon. It demonstrates the linkage between continental Buddhist Culture and Buddhism in Medieval Japan through the intersectionality of various subjective and objective actors such as, traveling monks from Japan bound for China, merchants and other immigrants from the Korean peninsula, archetypal old man and pestilence deities, as medieval Japanese aristocrats and Shungendō practitioners in the theoretical space of the East Asian Mediterranean. For those interested in transcultural Buddhist studies, Tendai Buddhism, and the diffusion of Buddhism in East Asia, more broadly this interview with Sujung Kim, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at DePauw University, should be an enjoyable and insightful listen.
Trevor McManis is a novice monk in a branch of the Vietnamese, Línjǐ school at Phước Sơn temple in Modesto, California.
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RELEASED:
Nov 3, 2020
FORMAT:
Podcast Episode
