Emma-Ō

Also Known As: also Enma-Ō, Enma, Enma Daiō, Great King Enma, and in the oldest Japanese tales King Enra; the Japanese form of the Indian Yama, received through the Chinese Yanluo Wang
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Japanese Mythology, Buddhist Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He judges the dead with the help of two scribes and a crystal mirror that replays every act of a person’s life, so that no lie told before him survives.
Role in Mythos: He is the king of Jigoku, the Buddhist hell of Japan, and the fifth and greatest of the Ten Kings who try each soul in turn after death.
Relation to Humans: Every person is brought before him on the thirty-fifth day after dying, and the prayers and offerings of the living family on that day are meant to soften his verdict. Parents once warned children that he pulls out the tongues of liars, and temples still open his halls on the sixteenth of the month.

The hall is dim and smells of old incense and cold stone. At the back, on a raised platform, sits a red-faced giant in the robes of a Chinese judge, mouth open in a roar that never quite arrives. His eyes bulge. His cap carries a single character: king. Children brought here for the first time tend to go very quiet. That is rather the point.

This is Emma-Ō, Great King Enma, lord of the Japanese hells and the judge every soul must face. He is also a long way from home. He began in India as Yama, the first mortal to die, who found the road to the afterworld and became its ruler. Buddhism carried him east. In China he became Yanluo Wang and acquired a courtroom, a desk and a bureaucracy. By the time he reached Japan, some time before the ninth century, he was a magistrate through and through. The monk Kyōkai’s collection of miracle tales, written down around 822, already has ordinary men and women dying, standing before King Enra in his golden palace, and being sent back to life to tell the neighbours what they saw.

His court runs on paperwork. In the medieval scheme of the Ten Kings, the dead are tried by a different judge every seventh day, and Emma-Ō takes the fifth hearing, on the thirty-fifth day. It is the one that matters most. Two scribes flank him, one reading out the record of good deeds and one the bad, brushes moving over long scrolls. If the accused protests, the king turns to the mirror. It is polished crystal, and it shows the sinner’s own life playing out on its face, every theft and every unkindness, with the sinner in the leading role. No one argues with the mirror.

So a working day goes something like this. A merchant is hauled in by horned wardens, still insisting he was an honest man. The scribe unrolls a scroll that reaches the floor. Emma-Ō listens, heavy sceptre resting in his fist, and the glass begins to glow. The merchant stops talking.

Japan added a twist of its own to this imported judge. A sutra composed in Japan around the twelfth or thirteenth century paired each of the Ten Kings with a Buddha or bodhisattva as his true form, and Emma-Ō drew Jizō: the gentle shaven-headed protector of travellers and dead children, the one figure who walks into hell to pull people out. The terrible judge and the kindest of saviours turn out to be one being with two faces. The scowl is real. So is the mercy behind it.

His most famous story belongs to a mortal. Ono no Takamura was a ninth-century courtier, scholar and poet, a real man who served the emperor in Kyoto. Legend gave him a second job. Each night, it was said, he climbed down a well behind the temple of Rokudō Chinnō-ji, at the crossroads where the capital’s dead were carried out for burial, and spent the dark hours as a clerk at Emma-Ō’s side. At dawn he came up again by another road and went to the office. One tale has him recognise a minister who had once done him a kindness among the newly dead, and speak up for him. The king listened. The minister woke on his own deathbed, alive, with wet earth still cold on his memory, and was afterwards extremely polite to Takamura.

Ordinary people found their own ways to deal with him. His holy day is the sixteenth, above all the sixteenth of the first month, when the lids come off the cauldrons of hell, the wardens rest, and apprentices were traditionally given the day off. At Genkaku-ji in Tokyo a wooden Enma has one clouded eye. An old woman with failing sight prayed to him, the story goes, and he gave her one of his own. She gave up her favourite food in thanks and offered it to him instead, which is why his altar is piled with blocks of grey konnyaku jelly to this day. In Kamakura, the great statue at Ennō-ji is called the Laughing Enma, after the tale that the sculptor Unkei died, was sent back by the king, and carved his likeness while laughing with relief.

His origin, in Japanese telling, is rarely discussed. He is simply there, as courts are. Nobody elected him.

His powers are those of a judge who cannot be deceived. He commands the oni who staff the hells, he holds the ledgers of every life, and his sentence fixes where a soul is reborn among the six realms: hell, hungry ghosts, beasts, warring spirits, humans or heaven. Liars fare worst, since he is said to tear out their tongues.

Yet he is bound more tightly than those he sentences. He cannot invent a verdict. The scrolls and the mirror decide, and he reads the result. He can be moved by the prayers of the living and overruled by the compassion of Jizō, who is himself. And Buddhist scripture adds a grim footnote: the king of hell is a sufferer too, made to swallow molten copper for his own old faults, waiting like everyone else for a better birth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Emma-Ō in Japanese mythology?

Emma-Ō, also called Enma or Enma Daiō, is the king of Jigoku, the Japanese Buddhist hell, and the chief judge of the dead. He is the Japanese form of the Indian god Yama, who reached Japan through China as Yanluo Wang. He is shown as a huge red-faced man dressed as a Chinese magistrate.

How does Emma-Ō judge the dead?

Emma-Ō judges each soul on the thirty-fifth day after death as the fifth of the Ten Kings. Two scribes read out the record of the person’s good and bad deeds. If the soul denies anything, Emma-Ō uses a crystal mirror that replays the person’s life.

What is the connection between Emma-Ō and Jizō?

In Japanese Buddhism Emma-Ō is regarded as a form of the bodhisattva Jizō. A sutra composed in Japan around the twelfth or thirteenth century paired each of the Ten Kings with a Buddhist figure as his true nature, and Emma-Ō was matched with Jizō. The stern judge and the merciful rescuer of souls are therefore treated as the same being.

Who was Ono no Takamura and how is he linked to Emma-Ō?

Ono no Takamura was a ninth-century Japanese courtier and poet who, according to legend, worked for Emma-Ō at night. He was said to climb down a well at the Kyoto temple Rokudō Chinnō-ji to reach the underworld and serve as the king’s clerk. In one tale he persuades Emma-Ō to send a dead minister back to life.

Why is konnyaku offered to Emma-Ō?

Konnyaku is offered to the Emma-Ō statue at Genkaku-ji temple in Tokyo because of a local legend. An old woman with an eye disease prayed to the statue, and Emma-Ō is said to have given her one of his own eyes. In thanks she gave up konnyaku, her favourite food, and offered it to him.