Shoki and a Cowering Demon

This work depicts the manager of demons, Shōki the Demon Queller, who controls a horde of demons who do his bidding. Despite their reputation as terrifying monsters and torturers, demons receive a certain amount of credit due to their role in Buddhist cosmology. They are the punishers of sinners in Buddhist Hell and the enforcers of karma—the belief that one’s actions, both good and bad, influence one’s current and future experiences and circumstances. Enough bad karma results in rebirth in hell.

In East Asia, Buddhists traditionally imagined hell as a vast bureaucracy modeled on the Chinese judicial system, a belief also adopted in Japan. The hell administration was organized like a pyramid with many layers and ranks. There were fewer, more powerful beings at the top who supervised hell, with demons as enforcers at the bottom.