Hell Bent For Paradise

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries priests from the Tateyama mountain area (Toyama Prefecture) brought paintings of the mountain, called Tateyama mandara, on campaigns throughout Japan that extolled its merits, drummed up warm-weather pilgrimage, and established venues for selling products and services. The images depict pilgrims, monks, animals, and supernatural beings occupying the mountain's landscape, thought to contain both hell and paradise. The local landscape was thus cast as a universalized portal to the other world and Tateyama preachers positioned themselves at its gateway as indispensable intermediaries to "salvation," a notion that encompassed a wide range of meanings, from enlightenment to temporary escape from hell. Drawing on methodologies from historical, art historical, and religious studies, this book untangles the complex premises and mechanisms operating in these pictorialisations of the mountain's mysteries and furthers our understanding of the rich complexity of pre-modern Japanese religion.