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

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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.