Gaki-Zoshi
(hungry ghost sketches)
A grotesque and sometimes shocking type of painting emerged in the years after the Genpei Civil War, pictures of the six types of existence into which human beings might be reborn if unable to achieve salvation. These are the realms of unenlightened heavenly beings, humans, animals, constantly fighting demons, hungry ghosts, and beings in hell.
The six worlds of existence had been described in the Heian period by Genshin in his essay The Essentials of Salvation, but the nobility and clergy of that era had been more influenced by the other side of his presentation: they were sure they were bound for paradise, and they focused on Amida's joyous welcome of them. However, during the civil war and the natural disasters that occurred around the same time, people saw horrors comparable to those described in Genshin's text. So deep was the pessimism of the postwar years that most people felt it more than likely that they would be reborn into one of the six realms, rather than in the Western Paradise. By contemplating rokundo-e, pictures of the six paths, or realms, they hoped to remind themselves of the suffering that might lie ahead, the better to avoid it.
Three separate groups of emaki depicting human illness, hungry ghosts, and scenes in hell — subjects appropriate for rokundo-e — have been preserved in various collections and are dated by scholars to the end of the 12th century. The small format of these paintings is particularly interesting, the vertical dimension of each sheet of paper being only about 10 inches (27 cm). Clearly these hand scrolls were made for intimate viewing, perhaps by one person alone. It is also clear that these scroll were not made by one artist. Consequently it would seem likely that they represent a genre of painting popular in the period after the Genpei Civil War.
Among these three sets of scrolls the most eerie is certainly the notebook of hungry ghosts, the Gaki zoshi. These ghosts are souls condemned to perpetual hunger, skeletal beings with bulging bellies, grotesque faces, and wispy hair who are fated to eat only human waste: dead flesh, splashes of liquid from a public well, afterbirth. In one illustration a group of noblemen and noblewomen are seated at a banquet, passing the time with food and drink and musical entertainment while tiny ghosts, like ants at a picnic, climb over them foraging for whatever they can find. One appears to be digging into the ear of the man plying the biwa, probing for ear wax, while to the left another seems to reach for crumb on a nobleman's cheek. The participants at the banquet, all attractive nobles with round faces and brightly colored garments, make a strong contrast with the bony, gray ghosts.
Penelope Mason, History of Japanese Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1993) 172-4.