Yilun Zhuang

Real Illusion and Illusory Reality: A Case Study of the Incorporation of Buddhism Concepts in Visual Culture in Late Ming

The late Ming dynasty of China is a period of advanced printmaking techniques and blossoming visual culture. This paper focuses on the visual complexity of a set of colored woodblock printed illustrations of a book published in 1640, only four years before the fall of the Ming dynasty. The elaborate pictures related to a famous play, The Romance from the Western Chamber originally written by the Yuan dynasty playwright Wang Shifu. The publisher of the book, Min Qiji (1580-after 1661), owned a renowned publishing house in Wu cheng, Zhejiang province.

This paper positions this set of pictures under the context of Buddhism in late Ming China. By the end of the Ming dynasty, Buddhism concepts were increasingly incorporated in popular drama, literature, and pictures. The pictures in Min’s book highlight the Zen Buddhism aspect in the text of the play, as they show the traversable boundaries between illusion and reality. They thus provide a Zen space for the viewer in the context of the pervasive sense of crisis that characterized the late Ming social and literary field.