Enma: Lord of Hell

One of the most well-known “deities” in Japanese religion is the infamous character Enma (閻魔) the Judge of the Underworld:

Sometimes in Japanese, he goes by the name enma daiō (閻魔大王) or “Great King Enma”. I touched briefly on Enma in a previous post, but I thought I would explore the subject a bit more because many Japanese know him well. Enma, according to my Japanese cultural guidebook is one ten rulers and judges of Hell who presides over someone’s life after they die. The 10 judges take turns to preside over the dead after the 7th, 27th, 37th, etc days after death, and Enma presides on the 57th day, in a hall called shinraden (森羅殿).¹ He is thought to be the most powerful of the judges of the Underworld. All of them look like Tang Dynasty Chinese judges, due to strong Chinese influence at the time.

Many Japanese and Japanese-Americans have told me that parents used to threaten their kids by saying that if you told a lie, King Enma would cut out your tongue as punishment after death. However, sometimes, Enma also would give someone a break and let them return to the world of the living, if he deemed their death untimely. Enma often appears cold and cruel, but not particular vicious or spiteful either. In more recent times, Enma was a famous character in the Dragon Ball animated series.

But even in classic literature, such as the Tales of the Heike, written during the Heian period, which was the you can see the powerful influence Enma has:

In her dream the Nun of the Second Rank asked, “Where has this carriage come from”?

“From the tribunal of King Enma [Lord of the Dead],” was the reply, “It has come to fetch His Lordship [Taira no Kiyomori]…”

“And what does the plaque mean?” she asked.

“…King Enma’s tribunal has decreed that the perpetrator shall fall into the depths of the Hell of Never-Ceasing Torment [Avici Hell]…”

–Tales of the Heike, Book Six: Death of Taira no Kiyomori

The messengers here are the famous servants of Enma: Horse-head and Ox-face. These demon messengers usually carry the dead back to Hell if they have been particularly evil, and give them a very unwelcome visit to Hell. The quotation above actually provides an interesting look at Japanese religion, because Japanese spirituality has become a kind of exotic mish-mash of Buddhist, Shinto and Indian mythology (via China).² The Avici Hell mentioned above is part of Buddhist cosmology and is considered the worst level of Buddhist hell, where Devadatta, the Buddha’s betrayer, dwells now. Enma himself is thought to be the Hindu god Yama, who was also the god of death and judgement, but “Yama” passed through the Chinese Taoist filter and became what he is known as today.

So behave, or you might see Horse-head and Ox-face coming to visit you some day, or worse yet, you lose your tongue!

¹ I think this translates as “Hall of the Silk Forest”, but that could just be a transliteration from Indian Sanskrit to Chinese. This happened a lot with imported Buddhist words and such. The kanji had no real meaning, but just transliterated the sound.

² For example, the ancient sanskrit writing of siddham exists nowhere else, but in Buddhist esoteric practices in Japanese Shingon and Tendai sects of Buddhism. Japan’s relative isolation from mainland Asia allows it the unique ability to absorb and preserve things that have been lost elsewhere. It also makes things pretty jumbled too.