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

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Monumenta Nipponica 63:1
existence by 955; 23 the mid-Heian diarist Sei Shônagon saw it when it
was brought to the empress for viewing following a Butsumyô-e. The images,
Sei Shônagon relates, were so terrifying that she fled into the next room. 24
Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s daughter Sen’yômon-in
(1181–1252) commissioned a hall at Daigoji . Built by the monk Seigen
(1162–1231), the hall was consecrated in 1223 and probably contained
extensive hell paintings. The paintings themselves are no longer extant, but a list
of colophons of themes for imagery planned for its walls includes forty-three
illustrations of stories about people falling into hell, reviving, and being reborn,
and scenes of eighteen hells. 25
In contrast to such documentary evidence, the actual hell imagery surviving
from the Nara through the Heian eras consists of little more than a few sketches,
such as those engraved on the mandorla of a sculpture of Jûichimen Kannon
in Tôdaiji’s Nigatsudô
, those painted on sutra frontispieces
at Chûsonji , and that in a Lotus Sutra mandala at Tanzan Jinja . 26
The earliest extant, most expressive imagery of hell is in painted hand scrolls
known as Jigoku zôshi . 27 Compared with later illustrations, these paintings
provide no sense of hell’s architecture and lack many of the visual referents
that subsequently became common. Rather than portraying a sense of place,
these images depict psycho-physiological experiences of pain.
The late twelfth-century Anjûin Jigoku zôshi graphically demonstrates
the brutal tortures awaiting sinners. The text in between each painting, based on
descriptions of the Hell of Screams from Zhengfa nianchu jing, explains the sins
summoning each torture: killing, stealing, sexual offenses, and selling alcohol
mixed with water. 28 The first painting in the scroll describes Hatsukaru
hell where dogs with bodies made of hot iron bite the legs of sinners and ironbeaked
eagles pierce skulls and suck out brains. All we see of this hell is one
naked man being devoured by iron animals, brushed in colorless ink with ver-
began in 838, but the recent scholarship of Takei Akio argues for 830. See Ienaga 1966,
p. 294; Takei 1995; and Katsuura 2000, pp. 101–31. Later a recension with three thousand buddha
names became standard, along with a correspondingly depopulated image.
23 According to Hokuzanshô, p. 134. Seiji yôryaku quotes Kurôdo shiki , records of rituals
of state (now lost) as mentioning the screen (p. 176), but it is not clear which of two Kurôdo shiki
it quotes. Ienaga surmises that the text quoted is that from 890, dating the screen to before then.
Takei, however, presumes it is the Kurôdo shiki written between 947 and 957. See Ienaga 1966,
p. 295; and Takei 1995, p. 1158.
24 Makura no sôshi, p. 88.
25 The hall, dedicated to Enma, will be discussed further below. See Abe 2004 and Abe 2005.
26 See Miya 1988, pp. 18–25.
27 These scrolls may originally have been part of a set illustrating the six realms that also included
Gaki zôshi and Yamai no sôshi . It is likely that they came from the set of rokudôe
catalogued as part of the collection of Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa, although there is no clear
connection between the listed images and the extant Jigoku zôshi. See Komatsu Shigemi
in Jigoku zôshi, pp. 125–31. For fundamental studies of these scrolls, see Fukui 1999, pp. 33–79,
275–334; Kobayashi 1974, pp. 197–350; Tanaka 1985, pp. 254–95. Also see the historiography
in Nakano 1989, pp. 81–88.
28 See Jigoku zôshi, pp. 40–49, 144. Also see Zhengfa nianchu jing; T 17:40a–47b.