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Scroll Of Hungry Ghosts Analysis

Decent Essays

For thousands of centuries, Japanese artists had been breaking the boundaries with their relentless creations of shocking pieces that made people question if there was a life after death. The popular subject of restless spirits or dark beings drove many artists from the Heian Period to modern-day times to express their stylistic techniques and narrative stories through woodblock printing and other alternative forms of art. Unlike most Western art, Japan’s disturbing representations of decaying bodies and death did not promote unrealistic, commercial expectations of death that commonly exists in art today. While handling such abstract ideas of the afterlife alongside the uncensored authenticity of death, each piece arouses fear and empathy for …show more content…

The scroll appears to consist of neutral brown and grey hues, with very thin black line work. The colors may have been brighter in the past, but the paper became considerably weathered with age. One scene in particular from this piece depicts people going about their daily lives, using the outdoors as a place to relieve themselves. All of the human figures in this piece appear to be focused and unfazed by what is happening around them. The corrupt figures known as the “hungry ghosts” live among these people in an alternate world where they suffer eternally. As punishment for crimes or wrongdoings they had committed in their lives, they were sent to a strange purgatory, similar to hell on earth, and reincarnated as semi-functional beings. To make the punishment more severe, they must feed on human waste while they endure the excruciating pain from starvation and thirst. “The abominable group of famished devils, their hands and feet thin, like dead branches, bellies strangely swelling, hair growing disheveled, and uncanny eyes shining in vain, cannot fill themselves” (Imamura 221). Their deathly, bony appearance is a frightful sight, but the humans do not appear to notice or care that they are playfully, almost skillfully, finding ways to tease them and retrieve their …show more content…

It consists of three panels, each with polychrome woodblock print on paper. This piece is inspired by a Kabuki story that narrates the aftermath of the Masakado rebellion, where Masakado’s daughter, Takiyasha, brings misfortune upon another through a menacing spirit: “A local samurai hearing that a ghost had appeared at Masakado’s residence, the Soma palace, goes to investigate and encounters Takiyasha disguised as a courtesan. When she fails to win the samurai’s affection, she summons a giant skeleton to overpower him” (Mason 289). During this time, it was rare to see a skeleton used in such a threatening way in Japanese art, especially when skeletons have been used for centuries long before the

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