Jigoku- Japanese LocationLocation · Realm"The Underground Prisons"

The Hells

Eight hot hells descend beneath the earth, each deeper and worse than the last. Each has sixteen subsidiary hells around it. Below those, eight cold hells mirror the descent.

In the Reviving Hell, the shallowest, oni wardens hack the damned to pieces with iron weapons. The pieces reassemble. The wardens begin again. In the Black Rope Hell, sinners are bound and their bodies marked with lines, then sliced along them. Deeper still, beings are ground between iron mountains that close like jaws. The torments grow worse with each level until the bottom: Avīci, the hell of unceasing agony, reserved for those who have committed the five grave offenses. There is no pause in Avīci. No moment between one suffering and the next.

The cold hells answer the hot ones. In the uppermost, the skin blisters from cold. In the lowest, the body cracks apart like a lotus flower shattering.

A single day in the deepest hells corresponds to spans of time beyond human counting. Beings remain until their karmic debt is spent.

The Judgment

Before reaching the hells, the dead cross the Sanzu-no-Kawa, the River of Three Crossings. On the far bank waits Datsueba, the old woman who strips the garments from the dead and hangs them on a riverside tree. The weight of the cloth reveals the weight of their sins.

Then comes Emma-Ō's court. The king of the dead consults the jōhari no kagami, a mirror that reflects every deed of the deceased's life. Nothing is hidden. Emma-Ō reads what the mirror shows and assigns the soul to the appropriate hell for the years needed to purge its karma. When the debt is paid, the being is reborn.