Jigoku

Jigoku, written in Japanese as 地獄, is the term for hell or the underworld in Japanese religion, folklore, and culture. It denotes the realm of punishment after death for those who have committed serious wrongdoing, and it is often imagined as a system of multiple sub-hells rather than a single place. In Buddhist cosmology, Jigoku corresponds to Naraka, a group of realms where beings experience torment according to the severity of their karma.

The concept of Jigoku varies by tradition but commonly features environments of intense heat, monstrous beings, and various punishments designed to reflect moral offenses. The cycle of suffering in Jigoku is temporary, ending when the individual's karma is exhausted and they are reborn into a different realm, such as a higher plane or one of the other cycles of rebirth.

Jigoku has a prominent place in Japanese art and literature. The Jigoku-zōshi, or “hell scrolls,” are a genre of medieval painted scrolls that depict the punishments of sinners across different hells, serving didactic and moral purposes by illustrating Buddhist teachings on karma, consequence, and repentance.

In modern popular culture, Jigoku appears in film, novels, and games. A notable example is the 1960 film Jigoku (Hell) by director Nobuo Nakagawa, which presents a stylized cinematic exploration of the hell concept and influenced subsequent works in Japanese horror cinema.