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

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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.