A Primer on Japanese Hell Imagery and Imagination - Occidental ...

The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom of Retribution: A <strong>Primer</strong> on
Japanese Hell Imagery and Imagination
Caroline Hirasawa
Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 63, Number 1, Spring 2008, pp. 1-50 (Article)
Published by Sophia University
DOI: 10.1353/mni.0.0018
For additional information about this article
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mni/summary/v063/63.1.hirasawa.html
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The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom
of Retribution
A <strong>Primer</strong> on Japanese Hell Imagery
and Imagination
CAROLINE HIRASAWA
IMAGINATIONS of hell appeared in Japanese literature, painting, and performance
beginning in the classical period. 1 Gruesome depictions and accounts
of an infernal afterlife cautioned laymen to lead upstanding lives, promoted
rites on behalf of sufferers, and exhorted monks to obey the precepts. Narrations
of an infallibly fair process of judgment reassured and threatened that, whatever
we may get away with in this world, mechanisms ensuring perfect justice await
us in the next. Postulations that we determine our own misery in hell guaranteed
redress; an experience of the pains we inflict on others in life rebounds in the
afterlife.
Such explications ascribed management of the process of retribution to both
external and internal forces. Numerous characterizations of damnation in the
Buddhist canon set out threats combined with moral instruction; they describe
THE AUTHOR is assistant professor of Japanese art history at the University of British Columbia.
She is indebted to Fukue Mitsuru, Adam Kabat, Fabio Rambelli, Takasu Jun, Melinda Takeuchi,
and the anonymous readers for advice and other support of this project. She expresses her gratitude
also to the temples, libraries, and museums that granted permission to reproduce works in
their collections. Unless otherwise noted, translations are the author’s. Titles of Chinese translations
of sutras and commentaries from Indic languages are rendered with Chinese pronunciation,
since Chinese cultural and linguistic influences transformed the texts and since they impacted
Japan in translation, but Japanese readings are used for terms, including the names of deities,
deriving from those texts. Dates are approximated in consultation with Bussho kaisetsu daijiten
and Daizôkyô zenkaisetsu daijiten, as are Japanese pronunciations. To save space, the full titles
and characters for works published in Taishô shinshû daizôkyô
have been omitted
from the reference list and placed instead in the notes.
1 On Japanese Buddhist conceptions of hell, see Ishida 1998; Jigoku no sekai; Kawamura 2000,
etc. For an introduction to the history of Japanese hell painting, see Miya 1988; and Kasuya
Makoto in Kokuhô rokudô-e. Published as this article was nearing completion, Kasuya’s
chapter surveys the development of rokudô-e and overlaps with some of the material here.
His approach, however, differs, and his work is recommended for readers interested in further
pursuing this topic.
Monumenta Nipponica 63/1: 1–50
©2008 Sophia University

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Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
judgment and retribution as occurring in actual places, precisely located in
Buddhist cosmologies, and the experience of punishment as physical. The same
range of sources simultaneously describe hell as provisional. They explain that
delusions arising from attachment, evil deeds, and the resultant karma cause us
to hallucinate or fabricate an entire kingdom dedicated to the task of ascertaining
and administering suitable punishment. We can appropriate or enlist the power
to disassemble hell’s foundations in our minds, thereby vanquishing the entire
bloodcurdling apparatus. These visceral and transcendent conceptualizations
coexisted and competed. As the most extreme example of the suffering incurred
by existence, hell repeatedly was engineered and displayed in texts and images
that attested to its concrete substantiality—and then was systematically eclipsed.
Occupying a relative position within a larger system, hell was always tied to salvation,
but its relationship to salvation shifted over time. This evolution was not
linear. Old forms persisted, died out, and reappeared with new force.
In spite of this continual reconfiguration, consistent premises governed imaginations
of this realm. Distinctions were made between what monks studied and
what they taught to save others, but fundamentally clerics and commoners shared
the same ambiguous paradigms. Hell’s terrors were a standard component of the
worldview of monastics, while, as hell increasingly passed into the public domain
during the Edo period, dynamic, transcendent responses to hell ideology flourished
in the print culture produced and avidly consumed by lay commoners.
Hell’s familiarity bred subversive uses of its structures and led to other spirited
appropriations. Some popular reinventions even came to rival the sophisticated
doctrinal and ritual formulations of generations of Buddhist intellectuals.
Geography
Originating in India, conceptions of hell picked up new attributes and finer delineation
as they migrated across China and Korea. Although the chronological
development of notions of hell in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist thought on the subcontinent
is difficult to determine, the sparse descriptions in early texts clearly
contain seeds of later elaborations. 2 In Chinese translations of Indian sutras and
commentaries that circulated widely in Japan, hell functioned as part of an
immense cosmology. Its contours vary greatly from text to text; here we will
concentrate on characterizations from the often-consulted fourth- to fifth-century
Buddhist encyclopedia, Apidamo jushe lun
(Jp. Abidatsuma
kusha ron, hereafter Jushe lun). 3
Seven rings of mountain ranges divided by seas surround an enormous mountain
called Myôkôsen (a.k.a. Shumisen ). A vast ocean encompasses
the outer, seventh range. This sea, bounded by an eighth rim of mountains called
Tetsurin’isen (also Tetchisen ), contains four continents in the car-
2 On hell’s early development, see Sadakata 1990, pp. 144–60.
3 On the cosmology described in Jushe lun and Apidamo dapiposha lun
(Jp. Abidatsuma daibibasha ron), see Sadakata 1973. On descriptions of hell’s location in other
texts, see Ishida 1985, pp. 58–65.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 3
dinal directions around Myôkôsen. The southern continent is the world we live
in, Senbushû . These water and land masses rest upon a golden disc that
sits upon a water disc supported by a wind disc. 4 Dozens of heavens occupy
stages along Myôkôsen and float above the mountain at increasingly astronomical
altitudes. Measurement of this universe is calculated in units called yuzenna
(or yujun ). 5 The seas are eighty thousand yuzenna deep, and Myôkôsen
rises eighty thousand yuzenna above sea level. Eight great hells (hachi
daijigoku ) lie beneath Senbushû, listed from top to bottom as Tôkatsu
jigoku (Hell of Revival), Kokujô jigoku (Hell of Black Ropes),
Shugô jigoku (Hell of Assembly), Gôkyô jigoku (Hell of
Screams), Daikyô jigoku (Great Hell of Screams), Ennetsu jigoku
(Hell of Incineration), Dainetsu jigoku (Great Hell of Incineration),
and Muken jigoku (Hell of No Interval). 6 The distance from the bottom
of Senbushû (eighty thousand yuzenna below sea level) down to the ceiling of
Muken jigoku measures twenty thousand yuzenna. This deepest hell is another
twenty thousand yuzenna deep and wide. Sixteen satellite hells surround the
gates of each great hell; there are also an additional eight cold hells. 7
Other texts claim four, six, ten, eighteen, thirty, forty-six, or sixty-four hells
(etc.), but many agree on eight. 8 Some works describe their layout horizontally.
Shiji jing (Jp. Seiki kyô), included within Chang ahan jing (Jp.
Jôagon gyô), for example, characterizes the tremendous ring of mountains that
bounds our world as two ranges, one nested within the other. Neither sun nor
moon shine into the space between them, which is the location of eight great
hells, each equipped with sixteen small hells. Here a wind howls, so powerful,
scorching, and putrid that if it blew into our world it would send mountains flying
through the air, and parch and powder everything to smithereens. 9
Further complicating the picture, Pure Land cosmologies that developed with
the rise of Mahâyâna Buddhism refer to countless buddha lands in every direction,
the destination of all who attain buddhahood. 10 Despite the infinite possibilities
of this exploded universe, only a few of these lands warranted detailed
4 T 29:57a–c.
5 Jushe lun describes one yuzenna as equal to eight kurusha (T 29:62b). The calculation
of one kurusha here may work out to eight or nine hundred meters. Measurements of yuzenna
in other texts differ.
6 T 29:41a. Translations from Sanskrit into Chinese vary, some prioritizing pronunciation and
others meaning. The deepest Avîci hell, for example, was transliterated as Abi or the meaning
was indicated as Muken , “no interval.” See Jushe lun for Muken as the definition of Abi;
T 29:58b. Likewise, the Indian word for hell or “place of torment,” naraka, was rendered as naraka
(also naraku ) or as jigoku , “earth prison” or “underground prison.” Such afterlife
prisons had purgatorial aspects, but to indicate the intensity of the punishments administered,
this article uses the word “hell.”
7 T 29:58a–59a.
8 See Xiao 1989, pp. 175–203.
9 T 1:121c, 125bc. This text, dating back roughly to the second century B.C.E., also describes
another set of ten hells. On this work, see Matsumura 1990.
10 See, for example, Wuliangshou jing (Jp. Muryôju kyô); T 12:278c.

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description. One of these became a common subject of text and painting as an
afterlife objective: the Buddha Amida’s (Sk. Amitâyus or Amitâbha)
Western Paradise (Saihô gokuraku ) or Pure Land (Jôdo ). 11 Early
texts do not specify the relationship between hell and the Pure Land, but they
were routinely paired in later eras. The accumulation of geographies gave rise
to many discrepancies. The dynamics of karma, however, trumped logistics.
Zhengfa nianchu jing (Jp. Shôbô nenjo kyô), an enduringly influential
treatise on the nature and repercussions of karma, for example, describes
how internal impetuses manifest as physical circumstances. 12 The text explains
damnation with a metaphor comparing the heart-mind or its workings to a skilled
painter who creates hell and other realms of transmigration just as artists conjure
up worlds through their paintings. “Black karma,” evil acts that bring on the recompense
of suffering, leads the heart’s painter to take up black pigment to depict
hell with black iron walls and people bound and burnt until their bodies are blackened.
One’s own karma creates this “painting,” not anyone else’s actions. 13 Contemplation
of the heart-painter’s operation encourages readers to strive for the
elimination of all acts, good or evil, that perpetuate reincarnation. 14 The text
treats other realms of rebirth similarly, but its most convincing argument against
transmigration depends upon extensive, vivid descriptions of hell. Zhengfa
nianchu jing inspired many efforts to convey these descriptions in visual form.
Visual Interpretations
Notwithstanding numerous textual descriptions, no Indian images of hell seem
to have survived the ages. Pinaiye zashi (Jp. Binaya zôji), an explanation
of miscellaneous matters in the vinaya, the rules governing monastic life,
contains instructions for the placement of hell imagery in monasteries. Descriptions
of imagery in it resemble what is left of a fifth-century painting at Ajaṅṫâ
of a “wheel of the five realms of birth and death” (goshu shôji no rin ),
but the image is too severely damaged to ascertain how it may have depicted hell. 15
It is impossible to pinpoint when Indian ideas about hell first began to influence
Chinese culture. We know that Buddhism was introduced to China around the
first century C.E., translation of Mahâyâna sutras and commentaries into Chinese
commenced in the second century, many texts were translated during the fourth
and fifth centuries, and Chinese conceptions of hell were well established during
11 Other famous buddha lands belong to the buddhas Ashuku (Sk. Akṡobhya), Yakushi
(Sk. Bhaiṡajyaguru), and Dainichi (Sk. Mahâvairocana).
12 The second century C.E. Sanskrit original does not survive. On this dating, see Mizuno 1996,
p. 289.
13 T 17:23c.
14 T 17:135b.
15 See Pinaiye zashi (Genben shuoyiqieyoubu pinaiye zashi , Jp.
Konpon setsuissaiubu binaya zôji), a Sarvâstivâdan-school text, at T 24:283ab. The dating is
unknown, but Yijing translated it into Chinese in 710. The painting is in Cave 17. See Teiser
2006, pp. 76–103. Images of hell dating from the seventh through the tenth centuries also survive
at Kizil, Borobudur (Barabuḋur), Bezeklik, and elsewhere. See Takata 1969, pp. 291–96.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 5
the Sui (581–619) and Tang (618–907) dynasties. Extant Chinese images indicating
hell date back to the early sixth century, 16 and Xu gaoseng zhuan
(Jp. Zoku kôsô den), a collection of biographies of prominent monks originally
compiled by Daoxuan (596–667), tells how seeing hell imagery at a temple
as a youth propelled the monk Jing’ai (534–578) to renounce the world. 17
Lidai minghua ji (Jp. Rekidai meiga ki), a history of Chinese painting
compiled by Zhang Yanyuan in the ninth century, mentions hell paintings
on the walls of temples in Chang’an and Luoyang, including hell imagery
rendered by the famous eighth-century painter Wu Daoxuan . 18
Chinese translations of the Buddhist canon officially began entering Japan via
the Korean peninsula in the sixth century. By the first half of the ninth century,
when the Buddhist didactic story collection Nihon ryôiki was compiled,
imported ideas about the afterlife had taken their place alongside older
Japanese beliefs. The textual record of hell painting predates most surviving
images; Nihon ryôiki mentions a painting of the rokudô (“six realms”), 19
and other sources, too, refer to now-lost hell imagery. Recalling Chinese accounts,
a biography of Son’i (866–940), who later became an abbot of the
Tendai sect, relates:
[W]hen Son’i was eleven years old he went to Yoshida temple on the east
side of the Kamo river. There on a wall behind a buddha [image], he encountered
a painting of hell containing illustrations of sinners undergoing torture.
Upon seeing this, he immediately discarded his playful ways and determined to
enter a mountain [monastery]. 20
Screen paintings of hell were used during rituals for expiating sin, now referred
to as Butsumyô-e , 21 conducted at the palace every twelfth month beginning
in the ninth century. Participants faced an image of thirteen thousand buddhas
and a ritual platform. At the back of the room stood a seven-paneled hell
screen. As the participants reflected on these images promoting penance, recitations
of a liturgical text called Foming jing (Jp. Butsumyô kyô) invoked
the many buddhas. 22 When the screen first was used is not clear, but it was in
16 On the development of hell painting in China, see Yin 2006, pp. 260–349.
17 T 50:625c.
18 See Lidai minghua ji, pp. 47, 54, 109, etc. On these and other stories about painters of hell,
see Teiser 1988, pp. 437–50.
19 Nihon ryôiki 1:35; pp. 52–53, 225–26; Nakamura 1973, pp. 150–51.
20 From a lost section of Son’i zôsôjô den , quoted in Nihon kôsôden yômonshô, p.
61. The latter work dates from 1249–1251. See Matsumoto 1992 and Takei 2007. The twelfthcentury
Konjaku monogatarishû
includes a story about a mid-Heian painter named
Kose no Hirotaka who painted hell on a temple wall. See Konjaku 31:4; vol. 5, pp.
444–45. On literary works describing hell imagery in Japan, see Ienaga 1966, pp. 291–318.
21 Historically these were called Obutsumyô , or Butsumyô Sange (“Buddhaname
penances”).
22 Foming jing most likely originated in China. Many recensions circulated in China, Korea,
and Japan, and rituals of penance took place in Japan from at least the late eighth century. These
gradually developed into the annual Butsumyô-e, thought to be based primarily on a sixteenfascicle
recension of Foming jing. Ienaga Saburô and others suggested that these rituals

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existence by 955; 23 the mid-Heian diarist Sei Shônagon saw it when it
was brought to the empress for viewing following a Butsumyô-e. The images,
Sei Shônagon relates, were so terrifying that she fled into the next room. 24
Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s daughter Sen’yômon-in
(1181–1252) commissioned a hall at Daigoji . Built by the monk Seigen
(1162–1231), the hall was consecrated in 1223 and probably contained
extensive hell paintings. The paintings themselves are no longer extant, but a list
of colophons of themes for imagery planned for its walls includes forty-three
illustrations of stories about people falling into hell, reviving, and being reborn,
and scenes of eighteen hells. 25
In contrast to such documentary evidence, the actual hell imagery surviving
from the Nara through the Heian eras consists of little more than a few sketches,
such as those engraved on the mandorla of a sculpture of Jûichimen Kannon
in Tôdaiji’s Nigatsudô
, those painted on sutra frontispieces
at Chûsonji , and that in a Lotus Sutra mandala at Tanzan Jinja . 26
The earliest extant, most expressive imagery of hell is in painted hand scrolls
known as Jigoku zôshi . 27 Compared with later illustrations, these paintings
provide no sense of hell’s architecture and lack many of the visual referents
that subsequently became common. Rather than portraying a sense of place,
these images depict psycho-physiological experiences of pain.
The late twelfth-century Anjûin Jigoku zôshi graphically demonstrates
the brutal tortures awaiting sinners. The text in between each painting, based on
descriptions of the Hell of Screams from Zhengfa nianchu jing, explains the sins
summoning each torture: killing, stealing, sexual offenses, and selling alcohol
mixed with water. 28 The first painting in the scroll describes Hatsukaru
hell where dogs with bodies made of hot iron bite the legs of sinners and ironbeaked
eagles pierce skulls and suck out brains. All we see of this hell is one
naked man being devoured by iron animals, brushed in colorless ink with ver-
began in 838, but the recent scholarship of Takei Akio argues for 830. See Ienaga 1966,
p. 294; Takei 1995; and Katsuura 2000, pp. 101–31. Later a recension with three thousand buddha
names became standard, along with a correspondingly depopulated image.
23 According to Hokuzanshô, p. 134. Seiji yôryaku quotes Kurôdo shiki , records of rituals
of state (now lost) as mentioning the screen (p. 176), but it is not clear which of two Kurôdo shiki
it quotes. Ienaga surmises that the text quoted is that from 890, dating the screen to before then.
Takei, however, presumes it is the Kurôdo shiki written between 947 and 957. See Ienaga 1966,
p. 295; and Takei 1995, p. 1158.
24 Makura no sôshi, p. 88.
25 The hall, dedicated to Enma, will be discussed further below. See Abe 2004 and Abe 2005.
26 See Miya 1988, pp. 18–25.
27 These scrolls may originally have been part of a set illustrating the six realms that also included
Gaki zôshi and Yamai no sôshi . It is likely that they came from the set of rokudôe
catalogued as part of the collection of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, although there is no clear
connection between the listed images and the extant Jigoku zôshi. See Komatsu Shigemi
in Jigoku zôshi, pp. 125–31. For fundamental studies of these scrolls, see Fukui 1999, pp. 33–79,
275–334; Kobayashi 1974, pp. 197–350; Tanaka 1985, pp. 254–95. Also see the historiography
in Nakano 1989, pp. 81–88.
28 See Jigoku zôshi, pp. 40–49, 144. Also see Zhengfa nianchu jing; T 17:40a–47b.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 7
milion blood highlights. The man can see nothing beyond his anguish. The next
hell in this scroll features kamatsuchû insects erupting from within two
sinners’ bodies as they consume flesh and bones (see color plate 1; color plates
may be found following page 28). The use of red paint increases in the raw, violent
gashes where the insects have feasted. A few sated maggots lie on the ground
near their supper. The sinners, their bodies unceremoniously exposed, sustain
too much pain to notice one other. They have not a moment’s peace to look
around, much less console anyone else. Although sometimes depicted in numbers,
the damned in these images are alone. Atoning for sin is a solitary process.
The most social interaction in the twelfth-century Masuda-ke kô version
Jigoku zôshi is among tormentors. Three demons in Geshin jigoku
(Hell of Dissection), a specific destination for monks who broke the precepts
against killing by butchering, cooking, and feasting on animals, for example,
steadfastly mince human bodies on cutting blocks with large knives (see color
plate 2). One demon stirs a pot of stew and helps itself to a portion. Another chats
cheerfully while enjoying a plateful, its pinkie extended delicately as it balances
a plate. Blood and bones stain and litter the ground where groups of human
beings cower and grieve, awaiting their turn to be transformed into dinner. After
consuming each batch of people, the demons say “revive, revive,” restoring the
bodies of sinners and replenishing their inexhaustible sources of meat, illustrated
as infants. 29 The scene would be germane to kitchens the world over, were the
meat not human. The demons in hell’s kitchen are no more indifferent to the suffering
of humans than human carnivores are to that of animals they consume.
The human bodies invoke empathy for the victims, but the familiar portrayals
of the demons foster closer identification, that we may recognize our own casually
cruel, demonic actions—and repent of them.
29 Kobayashi Taichirô noted that the hells for monks in the Masuda-ke kô version
Jigoku zôshi resemble those described in citations of Baoda jing (Jp. Hôtatsu kyô) in
Foming jing. Kobayashi presumed that the hell screen used in the Butsumyô-e ritual, based on
this text, was the model for the scroll. There are many recensions of Foming jing, but Kobayashi
postulated that the scroll was based on a sixteen-fascicle recension, considered lost at the time he
conducted his research. He drew his conclusions from comparisons with the Baoda jing quoted
in the Korean canon’s edition of a thirty-fascicle recension type; Kobayashi thought the thirtyfascicle
recension evolved from the sixteen-fascicle recension. The full title of Baoda jing within
the thirty-fascicle recension of Foming jing is Dacheng lianhua baoda wenda baoying shamen
jing
(Jp. Daijô renge hôtatsu mondô hôô shamon kyô). Inokuchi
Taijun
reassembled a sixteen-fascicle recension type of Foming jing from texts found
at Dunhuang and concluded that, excepting brief passages, Baoda jing was not quoted therein. A
sixteen-fascicle recension of the same type has recently surfaced at Nanatsudera (Chôfukuji
) in Nagoya. Many scholars currently believe that, indeed, Baoda jing is the basis for the
monks’ hells depicted in the Masuda-ke kô version scrolls, but which version of the text remains
undetermined. See Inokuchi 1964; Kobayashi 1974, pp. 275–350; Magara 1995; and Takei 1995.
Kajitani Ryôji , however, remarks that since Foming jing is a liturgical text likely used
in combination with other texts in ritual practice, there is no need to concentrate exclusively on
it in searching for the origins of this imagery. See Kajitani in Bukkyô setsuwa no bijutsu, pp.
251–57.

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While these images highlight demons or other creatures that torture and devour
sinners, ultimately they portray the sinner as the agent of the punishment experienced.
There is no judgment-issuing central institution, no place to file appeals,
nobody to turn to. The images confirm the perspective succinctly expressed by
the monk Kyôkai (fl. 782–824) in Nihon ryôiki: “Recompense [adheres to]
acts of good and evil the way that shadows follow forms.” 30 Retribution operates
like a law of nature, a morally driven, automatically occurring phenomenon. The
immediacy of these images reinforces the impact of the lesson. Looking at them
entails no inherently distancing activity. There is no background, no establishing
shot, only close-ups of agony.
The scale of hell painting became more ambitious in the medieval period.
Many works portray hell as a monstrous prison with impregnable walls, demonic
guards, and fierce watchdogs. It is a “punitive city” displaying “hundreds of tiny
theatres of punishment,” where “the penalty must have its most intense effects
on those who have not committed the crime.” 31 Soteriological concerns coincided
with disciplinary interests in maintaining a lawful society. One cannot,
however, portray the whole of hell without decreasing the ratio of human size
to environment. As in the Jigoku zôshi, generic representation allows each person
to stand in for a multitude of similar sufferers. Yet because we cannot get close
to those depicted, the impact of shared experience decreases. Artists negotiated
various proportional compromises as they enlarged their window on hell, but
despite the increase in population in these later works, compared to the earlier
Jigoku zôshi, hell seems smaller, resembling a little factory or workshop. 32
Many such depictions of the landscape of hell reflect the influence of Ôjôyôshû
, completed in 985 by the Tendai monk Genshin (942–1017). 33
This treatise starts with reports of hell stitched together from scraps of sutras—
heavily relying on Zhengfa nianchu jing—and weaves them into a compelling
drama advocating salvation through faith in rebirth in the Pure Land. Pivotal
among surviving illustrations of Genshin’s text is the thirteenth-century rokudôe
belonging to Shôjuraigôji in Ôtsu. The iconography from the four
hanging scrolls focusing on hell out of the overall set of fifteen influenced subsequent
hell paintings in Japan through numerous close copies—and copies of
copies—made for other temples and displayed regularly. 34
30 In his introduction to Nihon ryôiki, pp. 4, 201; Nakamura 1973, p. 101. Kyôkai can also be
pronounced Keikai or Kyôgai.
31 This vocabulary is borrowed from Michel Foucault’s discussion of eighteenth-century prison
reform. Foucault 1975, pp. 94–95, 113.
32 No survey of Japanese hell painting is complete without mentioning Kitano tenjin engi
, an emaki that includes illustrations of a tour of hell and other realms in its wider narrative.
In the interests of space, however, this and many other notable images are not addressed here.
33 See T 84:33a–37a. In English, see Reischauer 1930, pp. 27–46.
34 On the Shôjuraigôji set, see Kokuhô rokudô-e. Temple lore claims that half of an original set
of thirty scrolls was lost, but scholarship reveals an initial count of fifteen. Early modern legend
relates that Retired Emperor En’yû (959–991), impressed by Ôjôyôshû, had Kose no Kanaoka
paint these scrolls under Genshin’s direct supervision. See Ôgushi 1983, pp. 92–98. The
temple had copies made in 1823. On various copies of this set, see Ogurisu 1991 and Ogurisu
2003 and 2005.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 9
Each of the main hells in these scrolls is contained behind an imposing gate.
The paintings portray even the most grotesquely imaginative torments and tormentors
with striking realism, further emphasized by the fact that, as Kuroda
Hideo has noted, the tools employed come from artisan workshops
and other workplaces. 35 We see blacksmiths’ tools in tongue-pulling iron tongs
and bellows that intensify hell’s infernos; carpenters’ instruments are used to
draw straight lines across bodies and saw them in half; from fish handlers come
cutting blocks and knives. Of more widespread provenance, mortars, pestles,
grinders, and large boiling pots—props in countless hell paintings—are familiar
items in many kitchens. Kuroda observed that nobody better understood the
effects of these tools than the people who used them. Indeed, a workaday approach
to the chores of torture characterizes many images. Hell warps nightmarishly
out of daily life, underscoring the principle that suffering prevails
throughout the realms of transmigration and promoting compassion by illustrating
that one being’s workplace can inadvertently function as another’s hell.
The shallowest of the eight great hells as described by Genshin and depicted
in the Shôjuraigôji scrolls is Tôkatsu jigoku, the Hell of Revival. Here demons
wielding all manner of pikes, bats, axes, and maces besiege and incinerate sinners
guilty of killing. The damned attack each other viciously with iron fingernails,
scratching and scraping each other to shreds. They are forced to climb sword
trees that pierce them and are also sliced up like fish meat. After bodies are completely
destroyed, a cool wind or a voice revives them for new rounds of abuse.
Worse sinners who both killed and stole descend to Kokujô jigoku, the Hell of
Black Ropes (see color plate 3), where demons mark clean lines down the middle
of their bodies with iron ropes preparatory to sawing them neatly in half. Another
punishment involves shimmying across a blisteringly hot iron rope suspended
between two mountains over a fire raging in an iron cauldron. Heavy iron weights
strapped to sinners’ backs invariably cause them to plunge into the flames below.
Those who killed, stole, and committed adultery fall into Shugô jigoku, the
Hell of Assembly, where they are chased into a crevice between two mountains
and ground to minced meat, thrown into a river running with molten copper, and
devoured by beasts. In the satellite hell of Tôyôrin (Sword-leaf Tree), a
beautiful woman beckons to male sinners from the top of a tree. As they climb
toward her, driven by desire, the leaves of the tree lacerate their flesh. In
Genshin’s description, when finally they arrive at the summit, bleeding and
ragged, the woman appears on the ground below, her eyes flirtatious, calling, “I
came to this place because of my thoughts of you. Why won’t you come close
to me now? Why won’t you embrace me?” As the sinners clamber down, the
tree’s leaves point upwards, ruthlessly slicing their bodies like razors all over
again. 36 Shugô jigoku also features satellite hells of retribution for sexual crimes.
35 Kuroda 2002, pp. 258–63.
36 Ôjôyôshû; T 84:34a. Genshin here quotes Zhengfa nianchu jing; T 17:32a. Tôyôrin was one
of the satellite hells most favored by artists. Although rare in medieval paintings, a reversal of the
gender arrangement can be found in the Idemitsu Museum’s fourteenth-century Jûô jigoku zu
.

10
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
In Akkensho (Place of Evil Views), for example, demons pour molten
copper into sinners’ anuses, punishment for abusing children.
Genshin notes that two further hells, the Hell of Screams (Kyôkan jigoku
) and the Great Hell of Screams (Daikyôkan jigoku ), await those
who committed the sins just described and also drank alcohol and lied. 37 His narration
is too spare or repetitive to have inspired many distinctive images—and
the Shôjuraigôji set does not include scrolls devoted to these hells—but many
other hell paintings lavish attention on a satellite called Jumuhenku
(Undergoing Limitless Agonies) that features tongues torn out with pliers. The
tongues grow back and are ripped out repeatedly (see, for example, the lower
right corner of figure 4 below, p. 20). 38 Indicating the creative challenges of
portraying a series of ever-escalating horrors, the Shôjuraigôji set also omits the
next two hells described by Genshin, the Hell of Incinerating Heat (Shônetsu
jigoku ) and the Great Hell of Incinerating Heat (Daishônetsu jigoku
). 39 Therefore, we now plummet past them to the deepest hell, Abi jigoku
, also known as Muken jigoku, the Hell of No Interval (see color plate
4), 40 an unrelentingly scorching abode reserved for individuals who have committed
the most heinous sins, such as killing their parents or injuring a buddha.
According to certain texts, people fall into all hells headlong, 41 but images of
upside-down bodies dropping into a conflagration (visible at the top of color
plate 4) tend to denote this hell. After two thousand years of hurtling through an
unfathomable abyss, sinners arrive at the iron net marking Abi’s upper limits
where fierce beasts, millions of fire-breathing worms, and poisonous serpents
await them. The wardens of Abi conduct many of the same tortures found in
higher hells, but ratchet them up thousands of times, a circumstance that makes
nearly impossible demands on a painter’s skills. According to Ôjôyôshû, Abi’s
muscle-bound demons have sixty-four eyes and eight ox heads crowning their
own, each sporting eighteen fire-emitting horns, 42 but painters rarely packed all
of that detail into their renditions. The Shôjuraigôji scroll concentrates on a
demon dropping a glowingly molten iron sphere into a pried-open mouth and on
another sinner’s tongue stretched out and nailed to the ground in utter anatomical
impossibility. Insects attack the elastic expanse of tongue; in other images,
tongues are ploughed by oxen. 43
37 Genshin’s terms for some hells differ from those in Jushe lun, described above, as they are
also influenced by other sources.
38 The Gokurakuji rokudô-e rendition of this hell is particularly gruesome, with tongues
scattered on a blood-soaked ground beside an assiduously laboring demon and its bound victim.
On this painting, see Sugamura 1987.
39 Genshin’s terms again differ slightly from those in Jushe lun.
40 On these descriptions of hell, see Ôjôyôshû; T 84:34a–37a.
41 See, for example, Apidamo dapiposha lun (T 27:362a); and Jushe lun (T 29:47a).
42 Ôjôyôshû; T 84:35c–36a.
43 The latter is a detail not described in Ôjôyôshû, but found in Bashi jing (Jp. Hasshi
kyô, T 14:965b); Dabaoji jing (Jp. Daihôshaku kyô, T 11:269b); Dizang pusa benyuan
jing
(Jp. Jizô bosatsu hongan kyô, T 13:782b), etc.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 11
These visual transpositions became standard ingredients for representing the
torments of hell in Japan, but they were not the only streams of textual and visual
influence, as we shall see below.
Judgment
Deities conceived in India assumed new offices and responsibilities as they
moved across East Asia, becoming stock characters in a theater of damnation.
Prominent among them is Enma , 44 described in the Vedas as the ancestor
of humanity, the first to die, and governor of a paradisical land of the dead. Absorbed
into the Buddhist pantheon and incorporated into esoteric texts, he is first
found residing high up on Mt. Shumisen as a heavenly being, or ten . From
heaven he moved down to the realm of hungry ghosts and eventually wound up
as the king of hell. 45
Enma and hell’s placement in vast Indian cosmologies were absorbed intact
in China, but during the Sui and Tang dynasties Chinese narratives rekindled
these imported fires on a more local scale. Notions of Enma became conjoined
with pre-Buddhist beliefs in a deity of Mt. Taishan or (Jp. Taizan) in
Shandong province, personified as the magistrate Taizan Fukun (also
). Human spirits were summoned to the mountain after death. At Taishan
records were also kept on lifespans, which were adjusted according to good and
bad deeds. 46 Reflecting the proximity imagined through such associations,
Chinese tales abound of people who travel to hell, see King Enma, and return to
report on their experiences. One from the seventh century provides convincing
anecdotal evidence of hell’s accessibility and materiality. After visiting Enma
and the gates of hell during a seven-day meditation journey, the Tang monk
Huiru awakens with a burn mark on his leg the size of a coin (caused by a
spark flying out of hell’s gates) and with a gift of silk from the king. 47
Enma also picked up new associates, associations, and apparel in China. Illustrated
versions of Shiwang jing (Jp. Jûô kyô)—recensions of Yanluowang
shouji jing
(Jp. Enraô juki kyô)—from the tenth century discovered
at Dunhuang display rudimentary iconographical components that redefined
44 Enma has many names, according to different conceptions and translations. In the Vedas, he
is Yama; as a heavenly being absorbed into Buddhism, he is Yamaten ; his identity in esoteric
Buddhism is Enmaten ; his name as a judge or king of the dead in the dark world is
often written as Enma or Enra . Other Chinese characters and names are used as well.
He also had many appellations in Indic languages. See Wayman 1959. To avoid confusion, the
main text of this article will refer to him as Enma.
45 On the early Indian Enma (Yama), see Wayman 1959; and Dandekar 1979, pp. 118–40.
Descriptions of Enma in the Buddhist canon vary widely. Chang ahan jing, for example, reports
Enma passing a pleasant time with consorts, periodically interrupted by torturous punishment for
his sins (T 1:126b), and the sixth-century Jinglu yixiang (Jp. Kyôritsu isô) tells us that
he was an historical king who vowed to become king of hell if he lost a battle—he was defeated
(T 53:258c). His name also delineates a post filled by successive officeholders. See Sawada 1991,
pp. 81–83.
46 See Sakai 1937; and Sawada 1991, pp. 37–48, 249–89.
47 Mingbao ji (Jp. Meihô ki); T 51:788c.

12
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
Figure 1. Shiwang jing (detail). © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Or.8210/S.3961.
Enma and that maintained their currency for over a millennium. 48 The texts,
which probably took shape in China, advocate mortuary rites that assist passage
through a series of judgments by ten kings at determined intervals. The dead appear
before the first king seven days after dying, for example, and before the tenth three
years later. The kings, Shinkô , Shokô , Sôtei , Gokan , Enma,
Henjô , Taizan, Byôdô , Toshi , and Godô Tenrin , also keep
track of whether rites are faithfully performed. 49 Assembled from an assortment
of Indian and Chinese traditions, Enma and Taizan have rich back stories, while
Shokô, King of the First River, and Godô Tenrin, King of Reincarnation in Five
Realms, seem to have been named for stages in the passage through the landscape
of the afterlife. 50 Shiwang jing recensions rhythmically illustrate each king’s court,
peopled with a few assistants, sinners wearing restraints, and virtuous dead. After
the last court, hell appears as a walled-off area guarded by a demonic warden, but
the recensions do not provide much detail of its torments (see figure 1).
Esoteric Buddhist images of the heavenly being Enma most likely arrived in
Japan in the early ninth century in mandalas of the two worlds. 51 Tang-dynasty
48 On these texts, see Du 1989; Motoi 2004; Ogawa 1973, pp. 81–154; Tsukamoto 1975, pp.
315–99; Teiser 1994; and Zhang 2001. Recensions without hymns are considered the oldest.
Illustrated versions, which contain elements not fully explained by the texts, may have developed
later. See Tsukamoto 1975 and Zhang 2001. Recensions of these texts bear many variant titles.
In accordance with general conventions established by recent research, this article refers to those
without hymns or illustration as Yanluowang shouji jing and to illustrated recensions with hymns,
including the type that definitely circulated in Japan, as Shiwang jing. See Zhang 2001, pp. 82,
91–93. On the paintings found at Dunhuang, see Matsumoto 1937.
49 People sponsored rites known as Shôshichisai preemptively in preparation for their
own afterlife, while surviving family members conducted Shichishichisai for the wellbeing
of the dead. The former may have preceded its combination with the latter. See Kominami
2002 and Motoi 2004.
50 Kominami 2002, pp. 199, 219–30.
51 Although the mandalas Kûkai (774–835) brought back from China do not survive, Enma
appears in the Takao mandara , thought to be a second-generation copy. On Enma’s
visual transformation and history in Japan, see Nakano 1989, pp. 124–49. Hell was important not
only in didactic stories and Pure Land thought; it was well known in Japan in early Buddhist circles
through sutras and commentaries (Ishida 1998, pp. 29–32). See, for example, Kûkai’s discussions
of hell in Jûjûshin ron (Himitsu mandara jûjûshin ron ); T
77:306c–307b.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 13
esoteric Buddhist texts had reidentified Enma as a lord of the dark world, routinely
associated with Taizan Fukun. 52 In early Japanese mandalas, he and
Taizan Fukun both wear bodhisattva-style clothing. Enma also appears as a
graceful deity in sets of twelve hanging scrolls of heavenly beings in the first
half of the Heian era and was worshiped independently in rituals using more circumscribed
paintings (see figure 2). The first hints in Japan of Enma’s iconographic
development from a heavenly being to an afterlife judge influenced by
the cult of the ten kings are found in later Heian devotional paintings dedicated
to Enma. While Enma initially continues to wear Indian clothing, he is accompanied
by Taizan Fukun, Godô Tenrin (also known as Godô Daijin ),
and two record-keepers, all wearing Chinese garb. Then, in Enma mandalas containing
nineteen deities, he exchanges his diaphanous bodhisattva garments and
gentle features for Chinese attire and the stern glower of King Enma. 53
Evidence that Enma’s esoteric alignment was combined with hell imagery can
be found in descriptions of the Daigoji hall commissioned by Retired Emperor
Go-Shirakawa’s daughter Sen’yômon-in and completed in 1223. Documents
indicate that the hall, dedicated to Enma, contained sculptures of him and of other
figures portrayed in esoteric devotional images to Enma. 54 As discussed above
(p. 6), paintings on the surrounding walls of the hall depicted hell.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sets of hanging scrolls of the ten kings
attributed to painters or workshops in the Ningbo region arrived in the archipelago.
55 The kings sit in Chinese-style chairs behind desks furnished with ink,
52 See Osabe 1971.
53 See Ajima 1991. Ajima supposes that this painting dates to the mid-thirteenth century and
may possibly be based on eleventh-century iconography.
54 See Abe 2004 and Abe 2005. The main figures were carved by Kaikei and Tankei .
55 On Song- and Yuan-dynasty ten-king paintings, see Nakano 1992 and Miya 1992. Many bear
the inscriptions of Jin Chushi or Lu Xinzhong . On these, see Ebine 1986a; Kajitani
1979; Ledderose 2000, pp. 163–85; Shi 1985; and Suzuki 1967. On the Ningbo workshops, see
Ide 2001 and Ebine 1986b. The chronological, regional, and iconographic gaps between the
Dunhuang and Ningbo ten-king paintings raise questions about their relationship to central Chinese
beliefs and images. Cheeyun Kwon maintains that ten-king paintings in the Seikadô Bunko
Art Museum were commissioned by the Koryŏ court in the twelfth or early thirteenth century
based on Northern Song models, but others see them as originating in fourteenth-century

14
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
Figure 2. Enmaten. National Treasure.
Courtesy of Daigoji, Kyoto.
Image reproduced from Josei to
bukkyô.
grinding stones, brushes, and documents. Assistants read from records, take
notes, or stand by ready to serve. In front of the desks, sinners cower—tied up,
shackled, and manhandled by demons—as they await judgment. The leg, hand,
and neck restraints they wear resemble instruments described in Chinese prisonmanagement
regulation manuals and sketched out in Shiwang jing. 56 Beneath
China. See Kwon 1999; Kwon 2000; Miyazaki 1999; and Takasu 1999–2000, p. 68. Kwon also
suggests that ten-king paintings in the former Packard collection predate the Ningbo images. See
Kwon 2005. One popular form of Korean ten-king iconography developed from Chinese models
of Jizô flanked by the kings. Such images arrived in Japan, but were not widely copied. See
below for the relationship between Jizô and Enma that became prevalent in Japan.
56 For a study of these disciplinary devices, see Niida 1980, pp. 597–614.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 15
each king are articulated one or two details of hell (see color plate 5). Visual
motifs from the Ningbo paintings copied or modified by Japanese artists and produced
in quantity quickly became widely employed prototypes. The mise-enscène
in Japanese renditions is firmly anchored in China’s past, reflecting the
original models, but people who fall into these Chinese courts are Japanese—in
numerous images sinners look back on their previous lives to see themselves
wearing Japanese clothing. 57
Enma’s distinctive, often independent portrayal in texts and images reflects
his Indian pedigree, unique among the ten kings, but his character, appearance,
and official duties were greatly influenced by Yanluowang shouji jing and its
illustrated recensions, Shiwang jing. These texts do not, however, elaborate on
Enma’s actions and the details of his court. More venerable descriptions of judgment
are similar; typically the king simply makes proclamations like, “Tabulating
your deeds in accordance with your sins and good actions, I pronounce
judgment.” 58 Japanese perceptions of the particulars of afterlife justice thus
derived from other sources as well. Notable among them was a longer recension
of Shiwang jing called Jizô bosatsu hosshin innen jûô kyô
(hereafter Jizô jûô kyô), possibly compiled in Japan before the mid-thirteenth
century, that circulated widely. 59
The section on Enma describes his great palace as having four iron gates, each
flanked by dandadô banner stanchions atop of which rest beings shaped
like human heads. They can see the activities of human beings as if looking at a
mango fruit held in the palm of one’s hand. Moreover, all living beings, the text
explains, have dôshôjin (together-born deities) constantly recording
everything they do. 60 Such witnesses report their findings to the king, who then
forces the dead to look into the Jôhari no kagami (Pristine Crystal
Mirror) or Gô no kagami (Mirror of Karma). Reflected therein are “each act
of good and evil, every karma-producing act performed during that person’s previous
life.” The text describes the vision as “akin to actually encountering people
and seeing their faces, eyes, and ears.” 61 The proceedings in Enma’s court
57 Noted by Kuroda 2002; Wakabayashi 2004; and Watanabe 1984. Many literary accounts of
hell have decidedly Japanese settings. Stories in Konjaku monogatarishû describe the place of
judgment as similar to the Kebiishichô , a Heian-era combination court and police
authority. See Konjaku 17:18; vol. 4, p. 32; 17:22; vol. 4, p. 39. Also see Kuroda 2002, pp. 243–45.
58 Yaoshi liuliguang rulai benyuan gongde jing (Jp. Yakushi rurikô
nyorai hongan kudoku kyô; from the fourth or fifth century); T 14:407b.
59 On the dating of this text, see Manabe 1960, p. 129; and Motoi 1998a, pp. 27–28. Japanese
linguistic and conceptual elements have led scholars since the Edo era to presume it to be a
Japanese work. It may reference a now-lost Chinese text. See Manabe 1960, pp. 124–31; and
Matsumoto 1942, p. 230. One argument claims that it was composed in China. See Xiao 1996,
pp. 592–603. Shiwang jing recensions that circulated on the Korean peninsula contain verse identical
to that in Jizô jûô kyô, but not found in Shiwang jing recensions from Dunhuang, suggesting
influence of the Korean recension type on Jizô jûô kyô. Motoi 2004, p. 20.
60 On the development of these spies, also called kushôjin , see Nagao 2000. Dandadô
stanchions, partly evolved from human-headed scepters carried by the heavenly being Enma, were
often conflated with dôshôjin.
61 Jizô jûô kyô, pp. 771–72.

16
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
do not anticipate vehement denial of good deeds, but rather function to expose
evil behavior easily concealed in life. In the face of omniscient witnesses and
irrefutable corroboration, sinners cannot repudiate or redefine the facts. In Jizô
jûô kyô, the dôshôjin take the witness stand directly after people face their deeds
in Enma’s mirror, saying, “There is not even the slightest discrepancy between
what we have seen in Enbu (the world of humans) and that which has
appeared in the karma mirror. Objects and their shadows have the same shape.” 62
In the many Japanese hell paintings incorporating images of such mirrors, the
crime most commonly recorded is killing. Aside from cardinal sins such as
murdering monks or setting fire to temple property, the mirrors reflect killing
associated with vocational and culinary customs such as the butchering of animals,
fishing, and hunting game. Animals gather around some mirrors, accusatorily
facing their slaughterers. Other mirrors depict warriors engaged in battle. Such
iconography prompted consciousness of the retribution awaiting those engaged
in certain professions and primed them to consider their options for salvation. 63
Genshin’s Ôjôyôshû mentions King Enma and his court only briefly. Nevertheless,
by the thirteenth century, the cult of the ten kings had become so firmly
associated with hell that even works that otherwise adhered closely to the framework
of ideas found in Ôjôyôshû included a judgment scene. An impressive
painting of King Enma and his court thus figures, for instance, among the Shôjuraigôji
rokudô-e (see figure 3). Flower petals and rays of light float down from
the lips of an angelic dandadô toward a respectfully kneeling virtuous man on the
right, while harsh, accusatory streaks of red from a demonic dandadô condemn
a sinner on the left, forced to view himself in Enma’s mirror stabbing a monk.
Since self-knowledge is a key to transcending self, hell, and the world, inducing
confession can be interpreted as a critical goal in the process of judgment.
That which is reflected in Enma’s mirror is none other than the bad consciences
of sinners, who can no more pull the wool over Enma’s eyes than they can fool
themselves.
Appeals and Hidden Identities
We have traced hell’s progression from a place of automatic, unmediated punishment
for evil deeds to an increasingly authoritarian system of judges and pre-
62 Jizô jûô kyô, p. 772. Lest the mirror, banner stanchions, and witnesses were not enough to
ensure justice, a scale belonging to the fourth king weighs sinners against their sins. Jizô jûô kyô,
p. 771.
63 Tangchao minghua lu, p. 76, contains a passage describing how, upon seeing a hell painting
by the famous painter Wu Daoxuan, butchers and fishermen changed their professions. Another
“occupation” targeted was that of motherhood. While relatively neglected in early hell painting,
beginning in the sixteenth century, hells related to female reproductive issues and responsibilities
became popular subjects for illustration in Japan. Women, accused of a growing catalogue of “sins,”
were threatened with hells resulting from jealousy, attachment, menstruation, infertility, abortion,
infanticide, having too few children, and dying in childbirth. In the interest of concentrating on
broad developments in hell imagery, treatment of the damnation of women is omitted here, but
will be addressed in the author’s forthcoming book on Tateyama mandara .

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 17
Figure 3. Enma’s court scroll,
Rokudô-e. Courtesy of Shôjuraigôji.
National Treasure. Image reproduced
from Kokuhô rokudô-e,
Kanai Morio, photographer.
cision assessment equipment.
Every sinful act is scrupulously
recorded, and it can take eons
of punishment to burn off bad
karma and reincarnate out of
hell, making it all the more
imperative to perform a larger
balance of good. There were
also, however, ways of compassionately
assisting deceased
loved ones, improving one’s
chances, and getting around the
system. Such methods for securing
leniency accommodated the
needs of believers, while simultaneously
serving the interests of
religious officiants.
During the medieval period,
commissioners and audiences
of hell painting grew to include
nonaristocratic classes. As the
estate system gradually deteriorated,
temples faced a loss of
income from their land holdings,
a situation that led many
to try to draw commoners into
their economic support system.
One means of doing so was to
promote the merits of a temple’s
main deities in painted handscrolls, and key among such merits was efficacy
in saving people from hell. 64 By the late medieval and early modern periods,
64 Satô 1987, pp. 43–46.

18
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
itinerant preachers frequently used images of hell in their outdoor marketplace and
street performances. 65
Purveyors of hell sold ritual services and talismans guaranteeing preemptive salvation,
last minute reprieves at the judgment, and release from punishment. Rather
than insisting on a cessation of sin through abandoning livelihoods and responsibilities,
the preventive measures propagated in effect enabled people to continue
their lives as morally compromised as ever—with assurances that they would not
suffer the consequences.
The same texts that set out the process of judgment rationalize methods of
avoiding hell. Yanluowang shouji jing describe uncomplicated, generic procedures
that yield disproportionately favorable results and that apply even to those guilty of
the worst offenses. One recension, for example, contains this passage:
[For the following deeds committed] while alive—killing one’s father, injuring and
killing one’s mother, breaking precepts, killing cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, or poisonous
snakes—for all of these profound sins, truly one should enter hell for ten
eons. If [that individual re]produces this scripture or images of deities, such [acts]
will be recorded in the karma mirror. King En[ma] will rejoice and judge that the
person be released and born into a wealthy, exalted household, avoiding the [repercussions]
of sin and error. 66
From the earliest descriptions of the ten kings we find that Enma responds favorably
to the commissioning of images or the propagating of sutras. Many paintings
show people on trial in Enma’s court holding some object as evidence that
while alive they copied a sutra or commissioned an icon, or that someone has
performed such acts on their behalf. Pious defendants appear fully dressed,
humbly offering themselves for judgment together with the sacred object that
will save them from hell. Some images depict fully dressed, but apparently
flawed, individuals ingratiatingly presenting devotional items, suggesting that in
many ways the practices of the bureaucracy of hell were assumed to resemble
those of this world (compare the defendants in figures 4 and 5). 67 In both cases
the clothing indicates that the supplicants will pass muster and continue on to
their next existences without serving time in hell. “Criminals” without enough
merit to escape hell wear nothing but loincloths, shackles, and cangues. 68
65 Watanabe 1995, pp. 227–70. At the same time, the high quality and condition of some surviving
temple and shrine foundation-legend scrolls suggest that they may have been donated by aristocrats
and never intended for use in preaching. See Miya 1989.
66 From a manuscript discovered at Dunhuang, now in the Stein collection in the British Library
(S. 2489), published in Du 1989, p. 55, along with transcriptions of many other recensions. This
recension of Yanluowang shouji jing may represent the oldest type. See Motoi 2004. I have consulted
Stephen Teiser’s translation of a manuscript of Shiwang jing also found at Dunhuang, now
in the Pelliot collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale (P. 2003). See Teiser 1994, pp. 202–203.
67 There is evidence that money to bribe King Taizan was placed into the mouths of the dead at
burial. See Liudu ji jing (Jp. Rokudo jikkyô); T 3:36c, translated into Chinese in the third
century; and Kominami 2002, p. 213.
68 Aristocratic sinners tend to be depicted as wearing more than their commoner counterparts,
even if that only amounts to fancier undergarments.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 19
As these images suggest, the wealthy might avoid payback for their less upstanding
deeds by dedicating resources to sacred text and image production.
Images sold otherworldly insurance policies to those who could afford to pay
for them—thereby sustaining their own cults. The poor and illiterate, on the other
hand, had few avenues to salvation apart from exemplary behavior. Perhaps
resulting from a sense of inequity, some stories cast doubt on the impartiality
and infallibility of otherworldly justice. There were loopholes, Enma made mistakes,
and his henchmen took bribes. 69 Those sinners fortunate enough to have
relatives to perform the proper rites escaped punishment—while those without
connections served their full terms. The bureaucracy of hell resembled that of
earth, warts and all, and overflowed into the world of the living.
Addressing imbalances, even those with few resources or little to recommend
them could hedge their bets by appealing to advocates who would negotiate with
Enma. For a modicum of faith or a tiny fee in other forms of prepaid spiritual
currency, such intermediaries helped sinners to get reduced penalties or to avoid
hell altogether. The merciful bodhisattva Jizô (Sk. Kṡitigarbha) was the first
choice of many, since he would descend to the very depths of hell to save people.
70
As with other deities we have examined, Jizô originated in India. He became
the focus of an independent cult in China during the Tang dynasty, and his popularity
there spawned many sculptures and paintings. 71 Among the most influential
texts on Jizô is the Indian Shilun jing (Jp. Jûrin kyô), emphasizing
the bodhisattva’s efficacy in saving beings throughout the six realms (particularly
hell) and promoting his benefits in this world, 72 and Dizang pusa benyuan jing
(Jp. Jizô bosatsu hongan kyô), which additionally describes his
prior lives. Such texts were copied in Japan during the Nara period, but in early
centuries Jizô, the “earth storehouse,” was important primarily as a subject of
esoteric prayer, paired with the bodhisattva Kokûzô (Sk. Âkâśagarbha),
the “sky storehouse.” Jizô as an intermediary or savior became increasingly significant
in the tenth century together with the promotion (in Ôjôyôshû and other
texts) of notions of the “end of the law” (mappô ), hell, and the Pure Land. 73
“Miracle stories” such as those in Dizang pusa yingyanji
(Jp.
Jizô bosatsu ôgenki), a collection of Jizô stories edited by Changjin in 989,
69 A story in Nihon ryôiki tells of Enma’s henchmen coming to fetch a man. After he serves
them food and offers his cattle, they agree to take another man born in the same year. The first
man lives to a ripe old age, and no mention is made of the fate of the hapless fellow who went to
hell in his stead. Nihon ryôiki 2:24; pp. 97–99, 247–48; and Nakamura 1973, pp. 192–94.
70 Others included the bodhisattva Kannon , animals one had saved or spared, and kami.
71 On the cult of Jizô, see, for example, Hayami 1975a; Hayami 1975b; Jizô shinkô; Manabe
1960; and Zhuang 1999. For a reference list indicating the tremendous amount of research on Jizô,
see Ôshima 2003.
72 Only fragments of the original Sanskrit text survive. It was translated into Chinese in the
fourth or fifth century and retranslated in the Tang dynasty by Xuanzang (602 [or 600]–664)
as Dacheng daji Dizang shilun jing
(Jp. Daijô daijû Jizô jûrin kyô).
73 See Hayami 1975a, pp. 37–42, 63–73.

20
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
Figures 4 and 5. Gokan and Godô Tenrin or Henjô scrolls, Jûô zu. Important
Cultural Property. Courtesy of Jôfukuji , Kyoto. Image reproduced
from Jigoku yûran. Many scholars regard figure 5 as Henjô, but Nakano

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 21
Genzô determines the same figure in the nearly identical Nison’in
set to be Godô Tenrin. See Nakano 1989, pp. 269–71, 335–36. Jigoku
yûran also labels it as Godô Tenrin.

22
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
played a key role in promoting faith in Jizô. 74 When exactly this work entered
Japan is not known, but it may have influenced the now-lost mid-eleventhcentury
Jizô bosatsu reigenki , edited by Jitsuei , which is considered
a source for stories about Jizô found in the seventeenth fascicle of the
twelfth-century Konjaku monogatarishû . One such tale relates that
officials from hell seized the monk Zôman . He protested that he earnestly
performed austerities, did not commit certain sins, recited nenbutsu prayers
invoking Amida’s name, and thus should, according to Jizô’s vows, avoid hell
and be reborn in the Pure Land. “That is what you say, but you have no verifiable
proof,” the officials replied. Eventually Jizô himself appeared, confirming
Zôman’s virtue and enabling him to return to the world of the living. 75
Handscrolls based on these texts and dating from the thirteenth century offered
vivid testimony to Jizô’s powers to save people from hell, introducing a glimmer
of hope to bleak painted universes of damnation. 76 Color plate 6 is a scene from
the Freer Museum’s Jizô bosatsu reigenki, held to be the oldest surviving example
of such scrolls. It describes the ghost of a woman who has fallen into hell as
explaining:
In this hell three times day and night I endure torments. First I am suffocated and
burned in strong flames like a piece of charcoal. Second, I climb and descend a
mountain of swords until my bones and flesh are completely destroyed. Third, a
demon comes and beats people with a cudgel. The number of blows is three
hundred and sixty-four. Having twice participated in [the activities of] a Jizô
association, establishing a connection with him, and having marveled at his
incredibly noble, compassionate vows, I made a profoundly sincere pledge that
wherever I went, I would rely on him. Jizô [now] takes my place and sustains
two of my tortures. I am still unable to escape the demon’s beatings, which cause
pain that penetrates my very bones and is difficult to bear. 77
The scroll illustrates four scenes: the woman telling a religious practitioner
her story; her body suspended upside down while a demon beats her and blood
streams down her back; Jizô on a pyre of flames as she looks on, hands clasped
in gratitude; and Jizô heading up a mountain of swords, looking back at her as
she watches in horror and relief. (Although, as discussed below, Jizô appears in
the earliest Chinese images of the ten kings, this early Japanese scroll is distinctive
in portraying him in the midst of hell’s inferno.) We do not know what
bad things the woman did, only that a fortuitous connection with Jizô enabled
74 The oldest surviving copy is from 1148. An often-cited recension entitled Dizang pusa xiang
lingyanji
(Jp. Jizô bosatsu zô reigenki) is included in Dai Nihon zokuzôkyô
(originally published 1905–1912 and republished in Taiwan as Wanzi xuzangjing
), but current scholarship regards Dizang pusa yingyanji as older; for the latter text, see
Umezu 1968, pp. 124–39.
75 Konjaku 17:17; vol. 4, pp. 29–31.
76 Illustrations of temple-foundation legends, such as Yata Jizô engi emaki
and Yûzû nenbutsu engi
, also spread ideas of Jizô as a savior.
77 Jizô bosatsu reigenki, pp. 42–45. Although they bear the same name, this scroll and the abovementioned
text by Jitsuei are two different works.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 23
her to escape two out of three punishments—and we can assume that eventually,
thanks to the merit of her having established the connection with Jizô, she will
escape hell altogether. Jizô’s efficacy and sacrificial exchange of his body for
hers (migawari ) are more powerful than the laws of retribution.
Complicating matters of who is saved by whom and from what, Enma came
to be perceived as a manifestation of Jizô. The source of this connection is
thought to be Shilun jing, which describes Enma among forty-two appearances
of Jizô, 78 and already in the ninth-century Nihon ryôiki we find King Enma telling
a visitor from the land of the living that he is “called the bodhisattva Jizô in your
country.” 79 Eventually, with the rise of honji suijaku (“original ground/
manifested trace”) thought in the eleventh to twelfth centuries, Japanese paintings
of the ten kings came frequently to depict Jizô floating above Enma—and
to portray other buddhas or bodhisattvas suspended above the other nine kings
as well. 80 (Figures 4 and 5 exhibit this development. 81 ) The exact religious and
iconographical background to this characteristic feature of medieval Japanese
portrayals of the ten kings is a subject of much debate.
The idea that buddhas and bodhisattvas transform their appearance to teach
sentient beings according to the latter’s level of understanding was well established
in India and China. The Lotus Sutra, for example, describes the bodhisattva
Kannon (Sk. Avalokiteśvara) as effecting thirty-three bodily transformations.
82 In China, beginning in the fourth century, Buddhist monks began pairing
the terms hon , “original,” with shaku , “trace,” to indicate the relationship
between divine Buddhist identities and their historical appearances. These
notions entered Japan in the Nara period. Early Japanese interpretations describe
the appearance or incarnation of remarkable men, such as Shôtoku Taishi
(574–622), as shaku (or suijaku). At this juncture, the emphasis was on the
sacred character of the figure so described rather than on its original identity.
Later Buddhist texts began to apply suijaku and related terms such as henge
or kegen to Japanese kami. From the late eleventh century, the concept
of honji, then also referred to as hongaku , began to take hold, and in the
twelfth century the combined term honji suijaku came to indicate correspondences
of Buddhist identities to preexisting local Japanese kami manifestations.
83 The elements of honji suijaku thought may thus be traced to earlier Indian
78 T 13:726a.
79 Nihon ryôiki 3:9; pp. 143, 269; and Nakamura 1973, p. 234.
80 On Japanese ten-king paintings, see Kajitani 1974; Nakano 1992; and Miya 1992.
81 Note that the honji in figures 4 and 5, held by Jôfukuji, are larger than those in most Japanese
paintings of the ten kings. The set was painted between 1489 and 1490 by Tosa Mitsunobu
. It is nearly identical to a roughly contemporary Nison’in set. See Miya 1992, p. 37.
82 T 9:56c–58b.
83 For a discussion of the development of these terms, see Yoshida 2006. There is much research
on honji suijaku. In English, see Teeuwen and Rambelli 2003. In Japan conflations of Buddhas
or bodhisattvas with other, often lesser deities in the Buddhist pantheon may have been perceived
differently from conflations with kami. Manabe Kôsai divides historical examples of
combinations with Jizô into two categories: Jizô’s dôtai kegen are Enma, Amida,

24
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
and Chinese notions, but their combination in Japan took on a distinct coloration
and application. 84 Much the same may be said of the iconography linking the ten
kings to specific buddhas and bodhisattvas.
Some scholars suggest that this iconography and its doctrinal foundations originated
in China. 85 Similar imagery placing divinities above their manifestations
can be seen in Song dynasty paintings. Such visual correspondences, unrelated
to the cult of the ten kings, entered Japan by the early twelfth century and would
have been seen by Japanese monks before the ten kings became popular. 86 It is
possible that such depictions influenced later Japanese ten-king imagery.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to find exact Chinese parallels or precursors to the
type of honji–ten kings imagery and doctrinal formulations that took shape in
Japan. A scene in the monumental stone carvings at Baodingshan in
Chongqing, dating from the twelfth century, for instance, shows ten buddhas and
bodhisattvas in medallion-like halos presiding over a tableau of Jizô, the ten kings,
and hell. Although the iconography appears similar to that found in Japanese
images of the kings, seven inscriptions in the hell section of the carvings indicate
a different context. Calling for contemplation of ten Buddhist divinities to
avoid ten hells, these inscriptions allude to rites performed on ten days over the
course of a month, as described in texts collectively known as Dizang pusa
shizhairi
(Jp. Jizô bosatsu jissai jitsu). Likewise, while the carvings
visually coordinate the Buddhist divinities with the ten kings, the combinations
do not correspond to any known groupings in Japanese texts or images
of the kings. 87 Jizô’s central position among the kings in this tableau, similar to
that seen in images found at Dunhuang, suggests his supreme authority over the
ten kings, ensuring that their judgments are fair, and indicates his protection of
Kannon, Bishamonten , etc.; Jizô’s suijaku are Atago , the kami of Kasuga’s
third shrine, Hie’s Jûzenji , Zaô Gongen , etc. See Manabe 1959, pp. 162–78.
Manabe’s categorization indicates that he sees an historical tendency to distinguish between Indian
kegen conceptions and Japanese honji suijaku conceptions.
84 Of course, belief in temporary manifestations of bodhisattvas existed in China. Qingjing faxing
jing
(Jp. Shôjô hôgyô kyô), for example, claims bodhisattva identities for Laozi
, Kongzi (Confucius), and the latter’s disciple Yanhui . This passage was well known
in Japan through Zhanran’s (711–782) quotation of it in Zhiguan fuxing chuanhong jue
(Jp. Shikan bugyô dengu ketsu; T 46:343c) and historically was considered a foundational
example of honji suijaku thought. See Imahori 1990, pp. 79–88. A copy of most of Qingjing
faxing jing, thought lost, recently surfaced at Nanatsudera; it differs slightly from the passage
quoted by Zhanran, but fundamentally exhibits the same structure of associations. See Qingjing
faxing jing, p. 13; and Ishibashi 1991. Mention of the ten kings being manifestations of Daoist
deities can be found in Daoist ten-king faith, suggesting a connection with Japanese developments,
but there is no clear evidence of influence. See Arami 2002; and Yoshioka 1989, pp. 359–63.
85 On similar Chinese iconography, see the important early study by Shi Shouqian (Shi
1985). For arguments that both the iconography and doctrine come from China, see the more
recent Arami 2002; Nakano 1992; Takeda 1994; Takeda 1997; and Yajima 1990. Each takes a
different approach.
86 Shi 1985, pp. 608–11.
87 Two Dizang pusa shizhairi texts discovered at Dunhuang (S. 2567 and S. 2566 in the Stein
collection in the British Library) are compared with Japanese groupings in Arami 2002.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 25
sentient beings as they undergo judgment. 88 The images do not, however, prioritize
his connection to Enma.
A comparable situation obtains with hanging scrolls of the ten kings from
Ningbo workshops. While Shiwang jing recensions depict Jizô together with the
ten kings, and some of the surviving Ningbo paintings include an eleventh scroll
dedicated to Jizô, most Ningbo paintings do not include honji-like entities above
the kings, as can be seen from color plate 5. Some scholars suggest that the few
Ningbo-style scrolls incorporating these elements, such as a portrayal of King
Henjô bearing the inscription of Lu Xinzhong from a set of scrolls from
Shômyôji at Kanazawa Bunko (color plate 7), may have been
commissioned by Japanese patrons with these specifications, or that the paintings
were touched up or painted in Japan, but this is still undetermined. 89 Notwithstanding
such possible exceptions, later Japanese ten-king imagery that
emphasizes honji-like connections with buddhas and bodhisattvas likely was
informed by the parallel development of honji suijaku thought in Japan, and drew
less from direct Chinese models than from Chinese iconography originally
intended for related but distinct Buddhist concepts.
Supporting this hypothesis, the relationship of each king to a Buddhist counterpart
in early Kamakura-era paintings of the kings and in some of the scrolls
attributed to Lu Xinzhong varies from set to set and differs from patterns that
emerged later. Standard equations that eventually became popular were long
thought to be based on the most commonly quoted recension of Jizô jûô kyô, but
recent research casts doubt on whether early Jizô jûô kyô recensions that circulated
during the medieval period included corresponding divinities. 90 The most
popular pattern of buddha and bodhisattva correspondences may derive instead
from Shiju hyaku innenshû
, a Pure Land–related text compiled by
Jûshin (1210–?) in 1257 that may have been disseminated by itinerant
88 See Watanabe 1989, p. 152; and Arami 2002.
89 A complete set of ten-king scrolls at Jôkyôji (Wakayama prefecture) also carries both
the inscription of Lu Xinzhong and medallions with bodhisattvas and buddhas. A signed set at
Hônenji (Kagawa prefecture) has no illustrated divinities, but their names have been inked
in, possibly a later Japanese addition. Based on the clothing of the divinities in the five extant
Shômyôji ten-king scrolls at Kanazawa Bunko, Takeda Kazuaki assumes that they are
Chinese (Takeda 1997, p. 20). Suzuki Masako supposes that the Jôkyôji set may be a
Japanese copy but does not rule out the possibility that it is the product of a Chinese workshop
(in Jôkyôji no bunkazai, p. 57). Akazawa Eiji assumes it is Chinese (Akazawa 1995, p.
445).
90 Motoi Makiko observes that the recension printed in Dai Nihon zokuzôkyô lists each
honji in a note beneath each king’s name, suggesting that they may not have been included in the
body of the original text (Motoi 1998b). Shimizu Kunihiko says early recensions did not
mention honji (Shimizu 2002). Conclusive findings await more systematic comparison of extant
recensions. On alternate correspondences in the Kongôzanmaiin
edition of Jizô jûô
kyô, see Watanabe 1989, pp. 168–69. For a comparison of the honji in different recensions, see
Motoi 1998b, p. 35; and Takeda 1997, p. 27. If Jizô jûô kyô were a Chinese text and if it originally
included honji, it would serve as definitive evidence that association of the ten kings with
honji originated in China (as assumed in Nakano 1992 and Takeda 1997), but recent research indicates
otherwise.

26
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
preachers of Pure Land faith. Other less common patterns can be traced to different
sects. 91
Fully developed honji suijaku thought, as illustrated in medieval suijaku mandalas,
posited systematic one-to-one correspondences in local cultic contexts.
The cosmologies resulting from each grouping of honji identities repositioned
local cults as central and universal. Some equations within a cult may have
changed over time, reflecting political, ritual, or other needs, but each honji suijaku
system balanced its honji to comprise a fixed mandalic universe, connected
to a specific place or sect. Perhaps assignments of honji to the ten kings performed
a similar function, associating ultimate jurisdiction over the afterlife with
particular sectarian contexts.
Alterations made when copying a continental set of ten-king scrolls now in
the Seikadô Bunko Art Museum, thought to be from the fourteenth century, also
suggest the development of this iconographic universe in Japan. In the original,
a small figure of Jizô floats above Enma, but the set has no other honji-like divinities.
Sixteenth-century Japanese copies belonging to Sôjiji (Wakayama
prefecture) add honji above the other kings. Only three hanging scrolls of the
copy set are extant, but they show the expansion and distribution throughout
other scrolls of images of the six realms; the Seikadô original only indicates the
six realms in the final scroll. Hell also occupies far more compositional space
compared to the original. Takasu Jun labels such innovations rokudô jûô
zu (“paintings of the six realms and the ten kings”). In a set of such
paintings at Chôgakuji (Nara prefecture), he notes, the ten kings, each
with its honji, line up across the top of the scrolls, representing the process of
judgment through time (see color plate 8). Vast scenes of hell and the six realms
below the kings evoke a spatial cosmology, subject to the temporal framework
of judgment, and the scrolls conclude with a bridge leading from Abi hell directly
to a raigô (“greeting”) by Amida and his entourage, welcoming sinners to
the Pure Land. According to Takasu, these images do not merely patch together two
traditions; they reconfigure and reinvigorate them as a mandatory circuit through
hell that ends in salvation—and that audiences can experience vicariously. 92
The inclusion of honji above the kings attest that wisdom and compassion
underlie their seemingly harsh verdicts. As correspondences of originals to manifestations
settled into standard formulae, the importance—and size—of honji
increased. This can be seen in the Jôfukuji set (figures 4 and 5) and reached an
extreme in a fourteenth-century painting of a colossal Jizô appearing to stand
directly on top of Enma’s head. 93 In another, later medieval cult, three buddhas
associated with esoteric Buddhism joined the ten honji of the kings. Eventually
the suijaku completely fell away from the iconography, leaving only images of
91 Yajima 1990, p. 72; and Shimizu 2002, pp. 191–92. Also see Shiju hyaku innenshû, pp. 61–73.
92 See Takasu 1992; Takasu 1993; and Takasu 1999–2000.
93 For a reproduction, see Nakano 1992, p. 65.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 27
thirteen buddhas ( jûsanbutsu ) for mortuary rites, without visual references
to judgment or hell. 94
The late medieval period, reflecting in part the impact of the Mongol invasions
of 1274 and 1281, saw a heightened sense of what was indigenous and an increased
interest in the guardianship of Japan’s kami. Repudiating the fruits of
centuries of self-imposed cultural colonialism, some intellectuals began to
reverse traditional honji suijaku hierarchies, recasting native kami as “originals,”
with buddhas and bodhisattvas as their mere manifestations. This deliberate
localizing of supernatural power extended even to hell. In one story, a Japanese
deity vows that sentient beings in Japan would fall into a Japanese hell so that
they might be saved from foreign hells. 95 Another story relates that the Kasuga
deity similarly provides devotees with a hell under Kasuga meadows and
assists people suffering there, thanks in part to Jizô’s honji relationship to one
of its shrines. 96
Enma’s Jizô identity may lie behind an Edo-era tale of an old woman with an
eye disease who brings her favorite food, konnyaku, to a sculpture of Enma at
Genkakuji . Enma rewards her faith and generosity by exchanging one of
his eyes for hers. Corroborating the story, one of the image’s crystal eyes is
clouded over as if by a cataract, and believers with eye ailments still pile gifts
of konnyaku before the image twice a year. 97 Enma’s willingness to take on our
hardships further interferes with ostensible presumptions of spontaneous administration
of the laws of karma and inevitable retribution.
Sundering Hell
Some of these vagaries, exceptions, and double identities may seem anomalous
or contradictory, but they were, in fact, important components of larger conceptions
of hell. One of the fifteen Shôjuraigôji rokudô-e scrolls is based on a
story in Ôjôyôshû (citing the no-longer-extant Youposai jie jing , Jp.
Ubasoku kai kyô) where a man condemned to hell snaps his fingers three times,
utters praise of the buddha, and is released. 98 In the image, hell’s cauldron cracks;
its waters cool; lotuses bloom, lifting sinners out of hell; and the man is escorted
94 This may initially have been a Shingon innovation, designed to compete with Pure Land rites.
Early jûsanbutsu seem to have added three representations of Dainichi; in the early fifteenth century,
these became Dainichi, Ashuku, and Kokûzô, an esoteric arrangement from the Womb mandala.
See Yajima 1990. Takeda Kazuaki traces the general evolution of this imagery as follows:
ten kings with ten buddhas; ten kings with eleven buddhas; eleven buddhas (the kings vanish);
and finally, thirteen buddhas. Takeda 1997. On the cult of thirteen buddhas, see Watanabe 1989.
95 “Shintô zôzôshû” (manuscript). The text in the second part of “Shintô zôzôshû” is also found
in Sannô shintô hiyôshû, a collection from 1579. For a published version of the passage referred
to here, readers may refer to Sannô shintô hiyôshû, p. 392.
96 See the thirteenth-century Shasekishû 1:6; p. 71; and Morrell 1985, pp. 85–86.
97 See Matsuzaki 1991, pp. 195–98. The image, situated in a temple in Bunkyô ward,
Tokyo, is known as Konnyaku Enma (a pun on konnyaku , a gelatinous, rubbery food made
from a root, and kon’yaku , “to suffer” or “disaster”) or as Migawari Enma.
98 Ôjôyôshû; T 84:76ab.

28
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
to the heavenly realm. 99 The instability of hell, illustrated here as a rupturing of
its infrastructure, was an integral part of the schema.
Buddhist texts and didactic stories describe many formulae known to be effective
for breaking out of hell, including taking refuge in Buddhism, reciting passages
from scriptures, and intoning spells. A famous story in the seventh-century
Huayan jing zhuanji (Jp. Kegon gyô denki), a history of Huayan jing
(Jp. Kegon gyô) that includes biographies of its translators and commentary
writers, 100 tells of a man identified only as Wang who dies and is taken
to hell’s gate. There Jizô teaches him a verse, “If people want to know the buddhas
of all times, they should contemplate in this way: the heart creates all of
the buddhas,” and instructs him that it will enable him to dispel hell. Wang recites
this phrase, the last four lines of a verse from the Huayan jing that came to be
known as “Yuishinge” ([Heart-] mind Only Verse), and is ultimately
released back into his life by King Enma. All of those within earshot of his voice
when he uttered the verse are also liberated. 101 The lines also became known as
“Hajigokuge” (Hell-tearing Verse), with many other texts also attesting
to their efficacy. 102 Earlier sections of “Yuishinge” incorporate the same
metaphor portraying the heart as a skilled painter found in Zhengfa nianchu jing,
but instead of advocating escape from the cycle of death and rebirth, Huayan
jing teaches that contemplating the heart leads to comprehension of ultimate
truth. There is no distinction, the sutra expounds, between the heart, buddhas,
and all living beings. 103 This realization can transform hell—as can, in the story
of Wang, a mere four lines from a passage that teaches it. Ôjôyôshû also quotes
Wang’s tale, 104 and it became well known in Japan. It was the basis for one of
the illustrations planned for the Daigoji Enma hall.
The term hajigoku (“hell tearing”) refers to various methods of escaping
hell, 105 but despite its implication of hell’s destruction, it more accurately
describes the eradication of evil karma that casts people into hell. 106 Ritual texts
99 For more on this iconography, see the author’s “Cracking Cauldrons and Babies on Blossoms:
The Development of Salvation Motifs in Japanese Hell Painting,” forthcoming.
100 Compiled by Fazang (643–712) and expanded upon by his disciples.
101 T 51:167a. The passage quoted in this story is from the sixty-volume Huayan jing
(Dafangguangfo huayan jing
, Jp. Daihôkôbutsu kegon gyô); T 9:466a.
102 See Watari 1994. “Yuishinge” in the eighty-volume Huayan jing is slightly different, but its
last lines were also known as a “hell-tearing verse.” See T 10:102ab.
103 For a full translation of “Yuishinge” in the eighty-volume version of Huayan jing, see Cleary
1993, p. 452. The heart metaphor is in the two Chinese translations of the Huayan jing at T 9:465c;
and T 10:102a. For a comparison of the painter metaphor in Zhengfa nianchu jing and Huayan
jing, see Kimura 1989.
104 T 84:73c.
105 On hajigoku, see Ishida 1968, pp. 237–46; Ishida 1998, pp. 134–37; and Matsunaga 1998,
pp. 237–39.
106 Misaki 1992, pp. 137–41. Misaki Ryôshû h , looking for initial and mutual influences
between Daoism and Buddhism, here also considers hell sundering in a Daoist context. For a parodically
literal interpretation of hell tearing—where warriors storm and wreck hell’s gates and
slay its demons, but ultimately cannot escape its torments until they seek salvation through
Amida—see the Edo-era Yoshitsune jigoku yaburi.

Plate 1. Torment by kamatsuchû, Anjûin Jigoku zôshi (detail). National
Treasure. Courtesy of Tokyo National Museum.
Plate 2. Geshin jigoku, Masuda-ke kô version Jigoku zôshi (detail). National Treasure.
Courtesy of Miho Museum. Image reproduced from Bukkyô setsuwa no bijutsu.

Plate 3. Kokujô jigoku scroll, Rokudô-e.
Courtesy of Shôjuraigôji, Ôtsu. National
Treasure. Image reproduced from Kokuhô
rokudô-e, Kanai Morio , photographer.

Plate 4. Abi jigoku scroll, Rokudô-e. Courtesy
of Shôjuraigôji. National Treasure.
Image reproduced from Kokuhô rokudôe,
Kanai Morio, photographer.

Plate 5. Shinkô scroll, Jûô zu, inscribed Lu Xinzhong . Important
Cultural Property. Courtesy of Nara National Museum. Image reproduced
from Nakano 1992.

Plate 6. Jizô bosatsu reigenki (detail). Courtesy of Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1907.375a.
Plate 7. Henjô scroll, Jûô zu. Courtesy of Shômyôji,
Kanazawa Bunko. Image reproduced from Kanazawa
Bunko no meihô.

Plate 8. Gokuraku jigoku zu (detail of the last three scrolls). Courtesy of Chôgakuji,
Nara prefecture. Image reproduced from Jigoku yûran.

Plate 9. Endon kanjin jippôkai
zu, from Fozu tongji. T 49:448a.
, Toyama prefec-
Plate 10. Kumano kanjin jikkai zu. Courtesy of Dairakuji
ture. Image reproduced from Jigoku yûran.

Plate 12. Kawanabe Kyôsai, Jigoku
no bunmei kaika .
Courtesy of the Kawanabe Kyôsai
Bijutsukan .
Plate 11. Katsukawa Shunshô, Japanese, 1726–
1792, Kô Sûkoku, Japanese, 1730–1804. Emma,
the Lord of the Realm of Death, and his Jade
Mirror (detail), Edo period, about 1785–1786
(Tenmei 5–6), Hanging scroll; ink and color on
silk. Image: 89.9 \ 34.8 cm (35 3/8 \ 13 11/16
in.). Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 11.7773.
Photograph © 2008 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 29
with hajigoku in their titles, used to effect salvation, include three apocryphal
works on hell tearing thought to have been written in China during the first half
of the ninth century: Podiyu tuoluoni yigui
(Jp. Hajigoku darani
giki), Podiyu yigui (Jp. Hajigoku giki), and Sanzhong xidi gui
(Jp. Sanshu shitchi ki). 107 These vary in length and content, but each
describes three grades of shitchi (“perfection”) mantra, the highest level
mantra being a ban ran kan ken , and their efficacy for “destroying”
hell. Referring to a story about the heavenly being Zenjû Tenshi from
the Indian sutra Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing
(Jp. Butchô
sonshô darani kyô), the first two texts mention a bodhisattva named Kikyô
(a.k.a. Zenjû Tenshi). 108 In this tale Taishaku (Sk. Indra) pities Zenjû Tenshi
for karma that dictates seven rebirths in the realm of animals and in hell. Taishaku
asks the Buddha why Zenjû Tenshi must endure such a fate, and the Buddha
teaches him a spell, “Nyorai butchô sonshô”
, that will save Zenjû
Tenshi. With this spell, the Buddha explains, “all hells can be sundered.” The
tale’s popularity can be gauged from its many Chinese translations, commentaries,
and related ritual texts. In one Chinese story a man named Wang Shaofu
dies and returns to life to report that his recitation of the spell caused those
he encountered in the afterlife to be reborn in heaven. He closed his eyes while
reciting it, and by the time he finished they had vanished. 109 The paintings
intended for the walls of the Daigoji Enma hall included this instance of hell
tearing, too.
A chapter on “Sonshô” practice in Keiran shûyôshû
(hereafter
Keiran shû), a fourteenth-century collection of medieval syncretic and esoteric
thought assembled by the monk Kôshû (1276–1350), introduces the
anecdote about Zenjû Tenshi as an example of superficial understanding of
hajigoku. 110 Zenjû Tenshi merely recites the mantras given to him and has no
comprehension of deeper truth. According to Keiran shû, the more profound
meaning of hajigoku is to transform existence from one that is subject to rebirths
107 The full titles are Foding zunshengxin podiyu zhuanyezhang chusanjie mimi tuoluoni
(Jp. Butchô sonshôshin hajigoku tengosshô shutsusangai himitsu
darani); Foding zunshengxin podiyu zhuanyezhang chusanjie mimi sanshen foguo sanzhong
xidi zhenyan yigui
(Jp. Butchô
sonshôshin hajigoku tengosshô shutsusangai himitsu sanjin bukka sanshu shitchi shingon giki);
and Sanzhong xidi podiyu zhuanyezhang chusanjie mimi tuoluoni fa
(Jp. Sanshu shitchi hajigoku tengosshô shutsusangai himitsu darani hô), respectively.
See T 18:909b–915c. On these texts, see Matsunaga 1998, pp. 231–49; and Misaki 1988,
pp. 499–508. Another seventh-century text explains that one can form a hell-sundering mudrâ
whereby “the gates of hell open and all the beings suffering [there] are at once liberated—and
King Enmara [sic] rejoices.” See Guanzizai pusa suixinzhou jing
(Jp. Kanjizai
bosatsu zuishinshu kyô); T 20:460b.
108 See, for example, T 19:349a–c.
109 Jiaju lingyan foding zunsheng tuoluoni ji (Jp. Kaku reigen butchô
sonshô darani ki); T 19:386bc.
110 The passage referred to here and in the following paragraphs is at T 76:558c–559a; I have
also consulted a copy belonging to the Shôkyôzô repository at Saikyôji in Ôtsu.
Here Zenjû Tenshi is taught the three shitchi mantras instead of “Nyorai butchô sonshô.”

30
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
based on karma into one that is an embodiment of enlightenment. The text explains
that the spontaneous, eternal triune Buddha body (musa no sanjin
), encompassing everything, is identical to the three shitchi, to Abi hell, and
to the highest realizations of buddhahood. Enlightened understanding of this
unfailingly tears hell. Such understanding, the text explains, has both exoteric
and esoteric aspects.
In an “exoteric” comprehension, contemplation of the heart enables the realization
that all of the dharma world is Birushana’s (Sk. Vairocana) environment
and body (eshô ) and that hell is located in the Buddha’s heart. 111
The esoteric approach expresses this understanding through ritual practice (phenomena).
Hell is Dainichi’s (Sk. Mahâvairocana) Pure Land of the Diamond
and Womb worlds, and the mandala is in our hearts. Keiran shû supports the
latter understanding with the medieval logic of analogy, borrowing ideas from
established esoteric conceptions. Our nine shiki (“consciousnesses”), the text
explains, are the eight petals and nine divinities of the Womb mandala—each
petal containing a buddha or bodhisattva, with Dainichi at the center, adding up
to a total of nine. The circular Jôhari mirror in the center of hell is our ninth shiki,
which is the heart’s moon-like (mirror-like) orb, also equated with Dainichi.
Eight other mirrors in Enma’s kingdom are aligned with the other eight shiki and
the other eight divinities of the flower platform. 112 Through contemplation, the
mandala world and hell are thus equated with the heart and shiki of the practitioner.
Furthermore, the landscape of the eight hot hells is conjoined with the
Womb world and principle, and the landscape of the eight cold hells linked to
the Diamond world and wisdom. 113 The passage concludes that if hell is the Pure
Land of the universal Buddha Dainichi’s two worlds, the living beings in hell
are the spontaneous, eternal Buddha-body trinity. When one understands this,
Keiran shû asserts, there is no hell that cannot be torn.
The more complicated doctrines and rituals described above tended to remain
the concern of Buddhist intellectuals and practitioners, but certain principles
were also taught to lay believers through images called Endon kanjin jippôkai
zu
. Consolidating and simplifying doctrines in graphic form,
these portrayed inhabitants of the ten worlds emanating from the character for
heart or mind (shin ), illustrating the Tiantai doctrine that the entire universe
111 This understanding is based on the Tiantai doctrines of ichinen sanzen (“the three
thousand worlds in one thought”) and isshin sangan (“contemplation of emptiness, phenomena,
and their balance in one heart-mind”). The text also references the eighth-century Tiantai
monk Zhanran’s Jinpi lun (Jp. Konbei ron; also Jingangpi , Jp. Kongôbei); T
46:781a.
112 On connections in the Podiyu yigui hell-tearing text between the nine shiki (the ninth being
amarashiki ), the nine-layered moon rings, and the eight petals and nine divinities of the
Womb mandala, see T 18:913c–914a; and Misaki 1988, pp. 505–507. Also see the description of
the Jôhari and eight other karma mirrors in Jizô jûô kyô, p. 771.
113 Keiran shû uses the words mitsugon and kezô , which in Japanese esoteric thought
refer to the two worlds. See Horiuchi 2000.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 31
is contained in a single thought. 114 The Tiantai monk Zunshi (964–1032)
formulated the iconographical prototype for these illustrations; in roughly 1023
his disciple Qinruo disseminated them in a printed edition with an introduction
that quotes the eighty-volume Huayan jing hell-tearing verse. 115 Other
texts contributed to the dissemination of this work. The 1141 Tianzhu bieji
(Jp. Tenjiku besshû) included similar content, without the diagram. Fozu
tongji (Jp. Busso tôki), compiled in 1271, contains a similar diagram
surrounded by the hell-tearing verse (see color plate 9). Single-sheet printed variations
of these illustrations of doctrine (many including the hell-tearing verse)
circulated widely in Japan during the early modern period. 116
In another pictorialization of this doctrine, itinerant preachers utilized paintings
called Kumano kanjin jikkai zu
(or Kumano kanjin jikkai
mandara
; see color plate 10). 117 These maintain to some
extent the relatively even distribution of the ten realms, with ten red lines radiating
out from the central character for heart to representations of each realm, but
abbreviate some realms and greatly expand the human and hell sections. The
arrangement informs diagrammatic doctrinal indications with the impact of hell
painting and a clear connection to human life. The character for heart in such
imagery came to symbolize salvation or rebirth in the Pure Land. 118
Hell had developed unique, well-defined architectural and geographical delineation,
but it was as easy and as difficult to master as the mind or heart. Rituals,
a sense of hell’s relativity, and its increased conflation with this world made it
more manageable—and perhaps a little less frightening.
The Devastations of Humor
During the Edo period hell imagery proliferated as never before. Artists had a
prescribed image bank to draw on; iconographical elements in countless
paintings remain traceable to templates established by the Ningbo-style and
Shôjuraigôji hell paintings. The performance of hell involved a standard set of
players, backdrops, and props, and a pithy, repetitive visual vocabulary. Artists
114 Expounded, for example, by the Tiantai patriarch Zhiyi (538–597) in Mohe zhiguan
(Jp. Maka shikan); T 46:54a. The ten realms are those of hell, hungry ghost, animal, asura,
human, heavenly being, śrâvaka, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattva, and buddha.
115 Published while Zunshi was alive, presumably with his approval.
116 The diagram published with the text in Wanzi xuzangjing (and originally in Dai Nihon
zokuzôkyô
) is not actually from the 1141 Tianzhu bieji. See Agio 1999; Tianzhu
bieji, p. 270; and Fozu tongji; T 49:448a. Qinruo’s quotation of the Huayan jing hell-tearing verse
in a writing about the ten worlds is consistent with Tiantai thought, since Zhiyi quotes the discussion
of the heart-painter from the first part of the “Yuishinge” (T 46:52c). The Tiantai connection
is clear even though he quotes the sixty-volume Huayan jing version (T 9:465c) and not
the verse from the eighty-volume translation inscribed on the diagrams. On the influence of
Huayan jing on Zhiyi’s thought, see Kimura 1977, pp. 210–13.
117 Some pronounce kanjin as kanshin. There is a great deal of research on these images. See,
for example, Ogurisu 2004 and Nei 2007.
118 See Ishiguro 2006. The heart-mind was also important in early modern Confucian and Shinto
thought.

32
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
freely combined or isolated components to suit the tastes and demands of patrons
and audiences.
Many temples owned paintings of the ten kings. Typically, each king had his
own scroll, shared with a honji, an assortment of officers, demons, and defendants,
and vignettes of hell or other realms, as in paintings we have considered.
There were also innovations, such as those seen in a set of seven hell paintings
at Zenshôji (Ishikawa prefecture) that depict spindly sinners mauled by
athletic demons against a spare brownish background, each scene divided from
the next by geometrically shaded framing. The only king represented is Enma,
sitting at his desk in one scroll and looming over hell’s cauldron in another, as
if orchestrating its tortures amidst the flames (see figure 6). Demons drive four
oxen over the tongue of one sinner, while other sinners are attacked by dogs,
crows, insects, foxes, mice, fish, snakes, dragons and other mythical beasts, a
monstrous turtle, and even an elephant. 119
Hell imagery was displayed routinely at temples, festivals, and marketplaces.
In the late medieval and early modern periods, Kumano bikuni (“Kumano nuns”)
used portable Kumano kanjin jikkai zu for etoki picture narration, contributing
to the presence of hell in the streets. These paintings incorporated new
hells for women, such as the Hell of the Blood Lake, the Hell of Barren Women,
and the Hell of Two Women, further transforming Japanese conceptions. Etoki
performances of Tateyama mandara by priests from the foothills of
Tateyama in present-day Toyama prefecture added to the currency of women’s
hells. Known as a site of hell since the classical period, the mountain became
connected to women’s salvation during the early modern period through a new
concoction of hell and salvation motifs. 120 These types of images rendered hell
in shorthand. Reduced to the most rudimentary elements, scenes of Enma at his
desk, sinners chased by demons, tongues extracted, and bodies pulverized or
falling into fire were nevertheless instantly recognizable. Such images had become
so ubiquitous and deeply etched in the popular consciousness that a visual
hint sufficed to summon a host of terrifying stories and images.
Dating back at least to the early eighteenth century, nozoki karakuri
were another innovation in the public display of hell imagery. Viewers peeked
into a box at a series of painted scenes for which transparent paper placed strategically
over scored sections and lit from behind provided depth and drama. Hell
and heaven were among the oldest themes displayed in these miniature theaters.
121 Much as with the preaching of Kumano bikuni, nozoki karakuri may
have originated in efforts to teach Buddhism to commoners, but developed into
a form of popular entertainment. Board games called sugoroku that featured
paradise or buddhahood as a goal and hell as a booby trap also had roots in teaching
and proselytizing. Perhaps originally developed as an aid to memorizing the
119 See Anoyo no jôkei, pp. 60–75.
120 On Tateyama mandara, see the author’s forthcoming book. Also see note 63 above.
121 See Nei 2005; and Nei 2007, pp. 138–40, 397–99, etc.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 33
Figure 6. Jigoku-e scroll. Courtesy of Zenshôji, Ishikawa prefecture.
Image reproduced from Anoyo no jôkei.

34
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
stages on the way to enlightenment, this infernal game of Snakes and Ladders
where salvation was determined by a roll of dice eventually became the model
for various completely secular versions as well. 122
Numerous illustrated woodblock-printed editions of Ôjôyôshû circulated, further
adding to the prevalence of hell imagery. While Genshin wrote the original
in kanbun, these popular illustrated editions (the oldest known of which dates
from 1663) used the kana syllabaries to make the work more accessible (see figure
7). There were also illustrated printed editions of Jizô jûô kyô. 123 Such printed
imagery drew from the fund of painted iconography, but the reverse was also
true. A set of ten-king scrolls at Myôchôji in Kawasaki, for example,
shows a man pinned down under his own tongue, over which a demon drives an
ox and plough—a conceit clearly copied from a printed edition of Jizô jûô kyô. 124
The availability of woodblock-printed books and rising literacy rates during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries helped to create fundamentally new
forms of interacting with hell. Widespread private ownership of texts and images
enabled ordinary people to gain access to knowledge once only available through
exclusive channels—in expensive painted scrolls or handwritten books—or
through images occasionally displayed, their reception often mediated by etoki.
People read books instead of only listening to selections and interpretations,
allowing a more active, individually paced engagement with the material, and
they procured or borrowed books through bookstores or lending libraries—both
completely secular domains.
Independent access engendered increasingly savvy commoner consumers of
hell ideology and created an environment ripe for satire and play. These developments
further enriched the meanings and uses of hell, which became the grist
for humor in popular theater, literature, games, and images.
Parody depends upon shared values to be effective. Audiences must be familiar
with the works and conventions referenced, and must be competent interpreters
of the complex layers of intended meaning. 125 Hell’s wide use in print
122 Kankon shiryô (1826), by Ryûtei Tanehiko (1783–1842), mentions, in a
section positing various possible origins for Jôdo sugoroku, that Kumano bikuni performed etoki
in which women were invited to cast flowers on painted handscrolls of hell and heaven. Kankon
shiryô, p. 231. Ogurisu Kenji
analyzed sugoroku in Kumano-related collections and
discovered that the content and composition of this type of sugoroku, completely different from
the more popular type, closely resembles Kumano kanjin jikkai mandara. Ogurisu holds that
Kumano-related sugoroku may have preceded Kumano kanjin jikkai mandara and that they may
have been used for preaching. The passage in Kankon shiryô supports his findings, although by
the time of its writing in 1826 that type of sugoroku may have fallen out of use. See Ogurisu 2007.
123 On illustrated woodblock printed editions of Ôjôyôshû, see Nishida 2001. On printed editions
of Jizô jûô kyô, see Hashimoto 1984.
124 See, for example, the reproduction in Enma tôjô, p. 17; Hashimoto 1984, p. 122; and Miya
1990, p. 94. Creators of illustrations for printed books also appropriated other printed images.
Shin sayo arashi , thought to be a reprint of Ihara Saikaku’s (1642–1693) lost
Wankyû nise no monogatari
, which included images drawn by Saikaku himself,
for instance, contains motifs borrowed from an illustrated 1689 woodblock edition of Ôjôyôshû.
Noted in Nakajima 2003, pp. 96–123. Also see Wankyû nise no monogatari.
125 This discussion of parody is informed by the analysis in Hutcheon 1985.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 35
Figure 7. E-iri Ôjôyôshû , Genroku 2
(detail). Courtesy of Bukkyô Daigaku . Image
reproduced from Nishida 2001.
culture—whether in earnest or in fun—thus communicates the robustness of the
paradigm well into the modern era, but societal changes simultaneously altered
attitudes toward the Buddhist worldview. Increasingly independent, highly
literate, secular readers scrutinized once inaccessible medieval sacred texts and
tenets, sometimes arriving at critical conclusions. Under the auspices of the
Tokugawa bakufu, moreover, Buddhist institutions established a more bureaucratic
relationship with the populace, bringing aspects of sacred and secular government
together. Some parodic conflations of hell and the world we inhabit can
be seen as a symptomatic facet of early modern tendencies to secularization.
Various images took the values and lifestyles of our world into the afterlife.
In Oni no shikogusa , an illustrated book from 1778 that relays how

36
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
Figure 8. Oni no shikogusa. Courtesy of the National Diet Library. Image reproduced
from Kabat 2000.
faith in Zenkôji and its icon conveyed everyone to paradise, hell suffers
a recession. With no sinners to stew, hell’s cauldron is covered in cobwebs.
Demons gamble as Enma tweezes his nose hairs to while away the time (see
figure 8). 126 An early Meiji work, Hima jigoku no zu , similarly depicts
hell’s functionaries with too much time on their hands due to the salvation
granted by the Buddha. A demon serves coffee to King Enma as he reads the
newspaper, bored demons take up new professions, and Enma becomes a tea
ceremony instructor. 127 Nichôsai’s (d. 1802?) illustrated scroll Bessekaikan
updates vocational appeals and warnings in hell imagery to correspond
to professions and predilections of the time. 128 Nichôsai nods to
traditionally brutal representations of hell, as in his soba noodle-makers’ hell,
where demons grate, knead, and roll out sinners like pasta dough, but one also
finds a tobacco hell, where demons smoke sinners like pipes (see figure 9), while
in candy-makers’ hell, sinners are twisted like taffy. Elsewhere an artistic demon
cuts and poses in a flower pot people who enjoyed flower arranging. While famil-
126 See Kabat 2000, pp. 196–97.
127 In the Clark Family Collection, on long term loan to the Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute of
Japanese Art, University of California, Merced.
128 See Nakatani 2003.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 37
Figure 9. Nichôsai, Bessekaikan (detail). Courtesy of Kansai Daigaku .
iarity sometimes served to increase hell’s frightfulness, in these examples similar
exercises become a source of humor. In another instance hell is transformed into
a site for erotic adventures. The ribald Jigoku zôshi emaki
describes
a young couple’s tour through an erotically themed infernal kingdom as ending
with a raigô triad welcoming the pair to paradise, but the three divinities sport
phallic heads. 129
Conversely, parody also brought hell’s conventions into the service of our
world, suggesting that certain professions or situations were hellish and enabling
people to laugh off their troubles. Illustrated books depicted comical hells for
potatoes—boiled, grated, and mashed—and compared the tribulations of courtesans
to particular hells. 130 King Enma’s authority, serious demeanor, and instantly
recognizable form made him irresistibly handy for satirizing hypocrites
or petty tyrants, as seen in Hiraga Gennai’s (1728–1779) comic novel
129 Held by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies ,
Kyoto. Censorship forced some parodic codes to burrow underground. In Kyôkun sangai zue
, a woodblock print from 1844, Utagawa Sadashige used hell in discreet criticism
of governmental reforms but was ultimately unsuccessful in evading the censors. On this
work and others, see Linhart 2004; and Minami 1997, pp. 142–45, etc.
130 For potato and courtesan hells, see two works by Santô Kyôden (1761–1816):
Ippyaku sanjô imo jigoku and Kugai jûnen iro jigoku. On hell in literary works, see, for example,
Ishida 1998, pp. 247–82.

38
Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
Nenashigusa (1763), in which Enma becomes infatuated with a male
kabuki actor immediately after sternly sermonizing against homosexuality. 131
One painting shows Enma peering into his magical mirror to spy on a beautiful
woman, using his tools for judging others to indulge his own passions (see color
plate 11).
Expressions complaining about the economic opportunism of those who
preached about hell—“hell is a branch office of heaven” or “even [the verdicts]
of hell depend on money”—entered the popular lexicon, the usage of the latter,
in particular, also reflecting the secular perspective of a thriving commercial culture.
132 The message was no longer abstracted from the messenger, and humorous
comments on buying and selling salvation—deriving, in part, perhaps, from
a longing to restore sacrality and integrity to Buddhist teachings—surely weakened
the hold that hell had on many.
It was not only parody that brought hell into ever closer proximity with our
world; early modern intellectual and historical developments also deemphasized
mysterious imaginations of the other world. Acerbically commenting on the
rapid Westernization of the country after the Meiji Restoration, 133 Kawanabe
Kyôsai (1831–1889) depicted Enma getting a haircut and a new suit (see
color plate 12). In retrospect, the image seems prescient. Enma, a fond, pathetically
bewildered old man, appears uncomfortable with the changes occurring
everywhere around him. Since the Meiji period, along with the introduction of
alternate worldviews, many traditional socioreligious practices have steadily
declined in Japan. 134 Perhaps in the tensions of this late parody from the dawn
of Japan’s modern era we can see intimations that, even as the threat of hell continued
to be directed at everyone and was no doubt taken seriously by large portions
of the population, the nature and purpose of sundering hell were changing.
Located at the crossroads of high and low culture, hell was built up of philosophy,
guilt, fear, opportunism, compassion, and ethical impulses. Depictions of
hell were employed at all levels and for a multitude of purposes. With so many
agendas colliding on hell’s construction, no wonder fissures appeared in its ramparts
and parody entered. Raucous send-ups overturned the hierarchies of
preacher and parishioner, paradise and hell, or judge and judged. Jubilant ridicule
of manipulative, mercenary propaganda questioned and complicated its meanings,
enabling ephemeral liberation from fear of death and hell, and defeat of
earthly powers. 135 Overcoming fear of mortality and shattering conceptions of
131 Nenashigusa, pp. 42–53. On the political and social implications of parodic prints of hell, and
for an image of Enma forced to face his sins in his own mirror, see Linhart 2004.
132 See Kagomimi (1687), pp. 251–52; Sesshû gappô ga tsuji (1773), pp. 696–97, etc.
133 Linhart 2004, pp. 355–60.
134 Indeed, this trend began long before Meiji—in Shutsujô gogo (kôgo) (1745), for
example, Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746) discredited Buddhism for its textual inconsistencies.
One of Tominaga’s arguments hinged on divergent, contradictory descriptions of the
universe, including those of hell. See Ketelaar 1993, pp. 20–28; Shutsujô gogo, pp. 26; and Pye
1990, p. 89.
135 Paraphrasing Bakhtin 1965, pp. 90–92, 123.

HIRASAWA: The Inflatable, Collapsible Kingdom 39
the world were also, however, objectives faithful to the spirit and intent of many
orthodox teachings about hell. Popular parody not only served new agendas, but
trounced hell with a mastery that paralleled more cerebral or expensive elite
methods.
Japanese hell painting ranges from exquisitely drawn flames curled around
elegantly brushed torture victims to cheap, poorly painted imitations and massproduced
woodblock prints. While the multiplication of lesser-quality or printed
imagery may have in time overwhelmed sober, skillful paintings of hell, and
while conceptions of hell endured repeated sundering and lampooning, hell’s
utility suffered no such indignities. The entire kingdom could be conjured from
the crudest sketch or delusion, and hell’s deconstruction was built into its very
architecture. As overcoming hell shifted from escape to transcendent reinterpretation,
conflation with this world, merriment, and rational dismissal, hell was
increasingly demystified—but it was only truly vanquished by those who abandoned
the complex paradigm altogether.
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