Disaster and Religious Perception: The 1959 Floods in Taiwan and the Remaking of the “Guanyin Riding the Dragon” Image

This project investigates the relationship between natural disasters and religion, examining how disasters catalyze the transformation of religious symbols. Moving beyond traditional iconography, the study adopts a social-contextual approach to analyze Harada Naojirō’s 1890 painting, Guanyin Riding the Dragon. While its Japanese origins have vanished from Taiwanese memory, the image became a ubiquitous icon of “Efficacy” following the devastating August 7 of 1959.
The research argues that this dissemination was driven by the interplay between the flood's collective memory and the influx of mainland Chinese Buddhist monastics and lay devotees in the 1950s, who integrated miracle tales with the image. By using black-and-white photography blurring original painting, the icon became embedded in everyday life—from temple ornaments to medicine jars. Ultimately, the study posits that modern religious transmission is rooted not only in technological progress, but in the nexus of collective experience, textual representation, and environmental crisis.