Dororo: A Novel
Tsuji Masaki
Part One:
The Tale of the
Hall of Hell Demons
Chapter 2
At that time, there was a temple complex on the outskirts of Kyōto that was mostly hidden in the middle of a bamboo grove. The temple complex was called Kiōin, the Temple of the Demon King. It had been built almost three hundred years before. History had been kind to the temple complex: all the supports were sturdy and there wasn’t so much as a single broken roof tile on any of the buildings. Rain fell all around the main temple, but it didn’t seem to touch it. It was as if neither the rain nor time had any effect on the Temple of the Demon King at all.
The Temple of the Demon King had several buildings in addition to the main temple, which was largest. In one of the courtyard gardens paved with small stones, there was a much smaller temple that was called the Hall of Hell. According to local legends, a famous Chinese sculptor had crossed the sea long ago and come to the Hall of Hell to carve his masterwork: forty-eight statues of the Buddha, all life-size or larger.
But the carver’s work didn’t turn out quite as he intended. While many of his statues had a similar shape and size to Amida Buddha,[1] their expressions were never serene and their shapes weren’t always human. Most of the statues possessed fangs and claws like wild beasts, and a strange light burned in their eyes. Far from being a holy place, the Hall of Hell felt like a site of concentrated demonic hatred.
In those days, just like now, people loved to travel and see new places, but no one ever came to see the statues in the Hall of Hell. The evils that the statues represented were loose in the world. No one traveled for fun anymore.
All told, there were forty-eight statues, each of them with twisted mouths and expressions marred by hatred and malice.
Perhaps the Hall of Hell seems like a misnomer. The usual image of Hell contains, for example, the Mountain of Needles, the Lake of Blood, and untold hosts of demons tormenting the dead. [2] The Hall of Hell demons looked more like buddhas than traditional monsters, for all the terror they imposed on people that looked at them. So how had the Hall of Hell gotten its name?
Sometimes, people asked that of the temple priests--usually people who had only taken a brief peek inside. Anyone who stood among the statues for a few moments understood the name. Weakness made their legs tremble; they went pale from fear.
“This is Hell,” visitors to the temple said. “This is definitely Hell on earth.”
“It’s the Hell we’ve chosen for ourselves in this world.”
Visitors to the Hall of Hell rarely came back again. They walked away from the temple trembling with their nails digging into their palms. Weak-willed visitors suffered lingering side effects, like headaches and dizziness.
“Those statues... were they really demons?”
“I feel like I’ve been poisoned, just from looking at them.”
Rumors about the Hall of Hell spread all over the countryside. Any number of visitors had symptoms of what was said to be a demonic curse.
The priests that tended the Hall of Hell and the surrounding temples scoffed at the idea of any kind of curse. “The statues are made of wood and stone, as everyone can see. There’s nothing evil about them except for how they look. What a ridiculous idea!”
But one day, one of the priests that tended the Hall of Hell died on his way back to see his family in his home village. There was an expression of terror on his face, but no obvious wound. When he was cleaned and dressed for burial, other priests discovered a deep purple mark on his stomach, as if someone had kicked him very hard.
Rumor of the priest’s sudden and mysterious death spread just like the rumors of the Hall of Hell’s visitors. People started to avoid the Hall of Hell and speak against it. The priests that had once maintained it neglected it. Fallen roof shingles were never replaced, and when a windstorm swept across the temple complex and collapsed part of the outer wall of the Hall of Hell, no one paid the damage any mind. As years passed, the Hall of Hell fell into decay. Wind whistled through holes in the roof and the walls. The doorway stood open, but the inside of the Hall of Hell was dark and uninviting. Spiders spun their webs in every nook and cranny. The spiders had no care or respect whatsoever for the demon statues; all forty-eight were cocooned in swaths of gray silk threads.
Sunlight shone into the ruined temple at times, making the spider webs shine like silver and illuminating the grotesque expressions on the faces of the statues. If anyone had been there to witness their ruin, they might have said that the statues appeared amused, as if they enjoyed seeing all the wreckage all around them. The statues looked like they were laughing, though they had no voices.
Some time after the Hall of Hell was left to stagnate, a young priest from the temple complex who knew little of the Hall of Hell chanced to come upon it and look inside. He screamed.
“They moved!” The young priest cried out. “The statues! They moved!”
The young priest pointed to one statue with a trembling hand. The statue faced him, eyes wide open, mouth pulled back in a grotesque grin.
But wooden statues couldn’t move. They couldn’t laugh or smile. Could they?
The young priest tried to convince the other priests in the temple complex about what he’d witnessed, but few believed him.
Not long after, the young priest died of a sudden illness that caused a high fever and chills. He ranted and raved about what he’d seen in the Hall of Hell until he died.
“I saw them! I swear it! I saw kitsune--demons in fox shapes! And frog shapes, great giant toads! I saw some demons that had no shape at all--they were spirits and had no bodies!”[3]
Whether anyone believed him or not, it was clear that the Hall of Hell was the lair of those demon statues. And while the statues had been carved of wood and stone, they were far more than that now.
The reason people called the Hall of Hell by that name was because there were real demons inside it.
Translator's Notes:
[1] Amida Buddha (Japanese:阿弥陀仏) Amida is the principal Buddha in Pure Land Buddhism, a branch of East Asian Buddhism. Amida means "Infinite Light;" the Buddha is usually depicted as prosperous and happy with a serene expression.↩
[2] This description of Hell comes from traditional children’s stories; Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s The Spider’s Thread (Kumo no Ito) would be familiar to most Japanese children of elementary school age. The Western/Christian view of Hell is obviously very different.↩
[3] The usual word that is translated as “demon” is yōkai (Japanese: 妖怪). Yōkai are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. Yōkai are also referred to as ayakashi (あやかし), mononoke (物の怪) or mamono (魔物) in different contexts. Yōkai are not literally demons in the Western sense of the word, but are instead spirits and entities, whose behavior can range from malevolent or mischievous to friendly, fortuitous, or helpful to humans. The nearest equivalent definition for yōkai in Western world should be "specter."
Yōkai often have animal features (such as the kappa, depicted as appearing similar to a turtle, and the tengu, commonly depicted with wings), but may also appear humanoid in appearance. Some yōkai resemble inanimate objects (such as the tsukumogami), while others have no discernible shape. Yōkai are typically described as having spiritual or supernatural abilities, with shape-shifting being the most common trait associated with them.↩
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