Descent into "Jigoku"

This exhibition is about jigoku, the hell of Japanese belief. The exhibited paintings are reproductions rather than originals, made at full size and in very fine detail from digital scans, so that the brushwork and the wear of the centuries can be seen close to.

The visitor goes through it in the position of the dead, along the road the dead were held to travel. It begins with kusozu, paintings that follow a body through nine stages of decay. Then comes chuu, the state between this world and the next. Then the judgement, in which the Ten Kings weigh what a person did while alive. At the end are the Eight Great Hells. The exhibition was supervised by Tamura Masahiko, who studies the cultural history of hell through its literature and its painting.

Among the works reproduced are the Hell Scroll, a National Treasure of the twelfth century held by the Nara National Museum, and Rokudo-e, paintings of the six realms of rebirth, an Important Cultural Property of the thirteenth century held by Gokurakuji. There is also a large hell painting from Chogakuji, designated by Nara Prefecture, and a statue of Enma, the king who gives judgement on the dead. Most of these are not usually on public view.

In one room the paintings are set moving on a large screen, and the demons and the dead in them come forward at the viewer. That part was made by KOO-KI, a studio that has worked on large projection pieces including some at the Osaka exposition.

Tickets are sold through Lawson Ticket.