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

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Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
Nenashigusa (1763), in which Enma becomes infatuated with a male
kabuki actor immediately after sternly sermonizing against homosexuality. 131
One painting shows Enma peering into his magical mirror to spy on a beautiful
woman, using his tools for judging others to indulge his own passions (see color
plate 11).
Expressions complaining about the economic opportunism of those who
preached about hell—“hell is a branch office of heaven” or “even [the verdicts]
of hell depend on money”—entered the popular lexicon, the usage of the latter,
in particular, also reflecting the secular perspective of a thriving commercial culture.
132 The message was no longer abstracted from the messenger, and humorous
comments on buying and selling salvation—deriving, in part, perhaps, from
a longing to restore sacrality and integrity to Buddhist teachings—surely weakened
the hold that hell had on many.
It was not only parody that brought hell into ever closer proximity with our
world; early modern intellectual and historical developments also deemphasized
mysterious imaginations of the other world. Acerbically commenting on the
rapid Westernization of the country after the Meiji Restoration, 133 Kawanabe
Kyôsai (1831–1889) depicted Enma getting a haircut and a new suit (see
color plate 12). In retrospect, the image seems prescient. Enma, a fond, pathetically
bewildered old man, appears uncomfortable with the changes occurring
everywhere around him. Since the Meiji period, along with the introduction of
alternate worldviews, many traditional socioreligious practices have steadily
declined in Japan. 134 Perhaps in the tensions of this late parody from the dawn
of Japan’s modern era we can see intimations that, even as the threat of hell continued
to be directed at everyone and was no doubt taken seriously by large portions
of the population, the nature and purpose of sundering hell were changing.
Located at the crossroads of high and low culture, hell was built up of philosophy,
guilt, fear, opportunism, compassion, and ethical impulses. Depictions of
hell were employed at all levels and for a multitude of purposes. With so many
agendas colliding on hell’s construction, no wonder fissures appeared in its ramparts
and parody entered. Raucous send-ups overturned the hierarchies of
preacher and parishioner, paradise and hell, or judge and judged. Jubilant ridicule
of manipulative, mercenary propaganda questioned and complicated its meanings,
enabling ephemeral liberation from fear of death and hell, and defeat of
earthly powers. 135 Overcoming fear of mortality and shattering conceptions of
131 Nenashigusa, pp. 42–53. On the political and social implications of parodic prints of hell, and
for an image of Enma forced to face his sins in his own mirror, see Linhart 2004.
132 See Kagomimi (1687), pp. 251–52; Sesshû gappô ga tsuji (1773), pp. 696–97, etc.
133 Linhart 2004, pp. 355–60.
134 Indeed, this trend began long before Meiji—in Shutsujô gogo (kôgo) (1745), for
example, Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746) discredited Buddhism for its textual inconsistencies.
One of Tominaga’s arguments hinged on divergent, contradictory descriptions of the
universe, including those of hell. See Ketelaar 1993, pp. 20–28; Shutsujô gogo, pp. 26; and Pye
1990, p. 89.
135 Paraphrasing Bakhtin 1965, pp. 90–92, 123.