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

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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 .