Salvation Reimagined: Sweet Dew Paintings in Wartime Colonial Korea

Abstract:Sweet dew paintings, which emerged in the sixteenth century, served as altarpieces for the low ritual altars where ceremonies for the disembodied were conducted in the three-altar configuration of the Korean Buddhist liturgy. Through their complex iconography, these paintings conveyed the message that all souls suffering from the misfortune and wrongdoings of previous lives could be saved through the salvific power of the divine and thus attain a better rebirth in their next life. Although this uniquely Korean genre of Buddhist paintings flourished throughout the Chosŏn period, it appears to have received heightened interest from the late 1930s to early 1940s with the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). However, this phenomenon has yet to be contextualized within the rich history of the genre and the convoluted history of modern Korean Buddhism. This paper explores the restructuring of this genre through a close examination of works produced in late colonial Korea by Poŭng Munsŏng 普應文性 (1867–1954) and Namsan Pyŏngmun 南山秉文 (d. 1950), and Kŭmyong Ilsŏp 金蓉日燮 (1901–1975)—three monk painters who reformulated the well-established iconography of sweet dew paintings at a time when the need to deliver the deceased and provide solace to the living was most urgent. This study examines the dual role that these paintings performed amidst the wartime mobilization of Koreans by the Japanese colonial authorities: While Munsŏng and Pyŏngmun’s collaborative work aimed to deliver the souls of fallen Japanese soldiers, Ilsŏp’s compositions from the 1940s intended to help Koreans counter the trauma of colonial mobilization. This article both reveals the multi-faceted function of modern Korean Buddhist paintings and contributes to our understanding of the war experiences of colonial subjects through the medium of religious visual culture.