Korea Journal of Buddhist Studies ISSN:1598-0642(Print) 불교학연구

Japan promoted Shintoism as a state religion, which is theocratic, to form the foundation of the emperor system and reinforce nationalism in the modern age. The Japanese Buddhist community that felt a sense of crisis because of the separation of Shintoism and Buddhism and the destruction of a statue of the Buddha pursued national Buddhism to unify politics and religion. As a result, the Japanese Buddhist community cooperated with militarism, established the doctrine for war and advocated imperial-way Buddhism for the emperor. For Korea, a religious body control policy was enacted in the age of the Daehan Empire. It seems that the policy was affected by the nationalist religious policy of Japan. In the colonial period, the temple provisions for a government general to have direct jurisdiction over and control of religious bodies was carried out. This was a tradition of the system, unifying religions and politics based on the ideology of the emperor system. Although some parts of the Buddhist community pursued removal of temple provisions, separation between religion and politics and autonomy of religious body, as war footing began, this showed the limit of colonial Buddhism which could not escape dependence on politics while Buddhism actively cooperated with the colonization movement and national mobilization with the head temple of a Buddhist sect. Modern religiosity was based on the search for a liberal, individual internal world where politics and religion are separated. In a modern age, Korean and Japanese Buddhism gave priorities to community and country rather than individuals and did not escape from the system unifying politics and religion and dependence on politics. Although internal search for individual and ego and philosophical religious discussion on the relationship between ego and other person were suggested in Japan, all religious orders of Japanese Buddhism cooperated with nationalism and militarism and core doctrines of Buddhism such as non-self, conditioned arising and emptiness were used to emphasize the emperor-focused national system and beautify individual sacrifice for country. In Korea, although attention was paid to the characteristic of Buddhism having both a philosophy and religion from the aspect of modernity, Buddhism devoted itself to a national protection theory for an emperor-system country and nationalism without overcoming the dependence on politics in the system unifying politics and religion and there was no consideration on modern religiosity.