The Promise of Sweet Dew: Picturing a Buddhist Public Sphere during the Pacific War

Known in Korea as Kamrot’aenghwa, the “Sweet Dew Buddhist painting” is a particular genre of Buddhist painting that emerged in the 16^th century under the Choson Dynasty (1392-1910)’s Confucianization of the Korean peninsula. Despite the state’s relegation of Buddhism to the margins of public authority, the genre’s proliferation in the 18^th -19^th centuries, its survival well into the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), and its contemporary reinvention by South Korean artists testify to the affective power harbored by Buddhist visual culture in Korea. More importantly, a closer investigation into the genre’s content, composition, and social function reveals the connection between the tumultuous history of modern Korea and the significant public role entrusted to Buddhism and its rituals. Well-known Buddhist rituals like “spirit guiding ceremonies” have provided a collective platform for the expression of mourning, dismay, and potentially public dissent. Representative of painting genres depicting such ceremonies, the Sweet Dew Buddhist painting intermingles three distinctive realms in a three-level composition: the land of Buddha for eternal salvation; a ritual with its altar and devotees; and episodic illustrations of sufferings and wrongful deaths. In addition to charting the modern history of this Buddhist painting genre, this presentation puts as a central object of analysis a 1939 example, wherein the monk painters transformed the sacred space of Buddhist ritual by introducing the epistemology of modernity and modern public culture, such as the visual spectacle and photomontage-like presentation of a rare glimpse into colonial life at the height of the Pacific War.