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

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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.