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

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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.