Meiji-era vision of Hell is not at all frightening, actually kind of cute

Depicting the horrors of hell through art is a tradition in Buddhism that goes back at least 1,000 years in Japan. By depicting the suffering in store for sinners, the artworks were supposed to scare people onto the straight and narrow.

But if that’s what this late 19th century scroll was for, it might have had the opposite effect. We’ve never seen such a cute hellscape!

This particular scroll is part of Waseda University’s collection and is a copy by an artist called Kanshou of an unknown earlier hell scroll. His style is simple and kind of spindly, making the humans and devils look cartoonish. The combination of that doodling style and the sometimes nonsensical situations makes for a very cute package, in our opinion.

Check out these highlights.

▼The hell where you are only allowed to air swim, like this pug