Who Is Lord Enma — Origin, Role, and Link to Jizo, Explained

"Who is Lord Enma?" Many know the name yet cannot explain his role. This article gently explains Lord Enma — long feared as the king who judges the dead in hell — from his origin to the meaning held in his images.

Who Lord Enma is

Lord Enma is the king said to rule hell and judge the deeds of the dead. When a person dies, their soul is said to be brought before Lord Enma and questioned, one by one, on the good and evil of their life.

What Lord Enma holds is "Enma's ledger," the record of one's deeds. He is said to weigh that record against the scene of one's past life reflected in the jouhari mirror set at his side, gauge the gravity of sin, and hand down a verdict. However much you talk your way around it, the deed itself appears as evidence — that is what it means to stand before this king.

His identity and origin — the Indian death-god Yama

Lord Enma's roots are said to lie in "Yama," a god who appears in ancient Indian scriptures such as the Rig Veda. Yama was the first human to die, and so, as the one who first found the road to the world beyond, he is said to have become the king of the dead who guides departed souls.

This Yama was taken into Buddhism as "Enma" and spread, with the scriptures, to China and then Japan. It is worth remembering that he was originally less an object of terror than a being who led the dead to a peaceful world — a nuance to hold alongside his later face as a "judge."

As one of the Ten Kings of the underworld

Having crossed into China, Yama merged with Daoist views of the underworld and was systematized as one of the Ten Kings who judge the dead in turn. Among them, King Enma is the fifth, said to preside over the hearing on the thirty-fifth day after death.

In Japan too, Enma has been widely embraced as the figure who represents the judgments of the "intermediate state" that runs from the seventh day to the forty-ninth. The idea that a different king judges on each memorial day is bound up with the custom of holding services at which the bereaved recall the deceased.

The belief that he is a form of Jizo

Even as he is drawn as a fearsome judge, in Japan Lord Enma has long been told to be a form (honji) of the bodhisattva Jizo. The stern Enma who judges sin and the merciful Jizo who travels the six realms to save beings — that these seeming opposites are said to be two sides of one coin expresses the idea that "the severity of judgment is also the reverse face of the salvation that calls us to live rightly."

The real meaning of the "pulling out tongues" tale

Lord Enma is known for the tale of pulling out the tongues of liars. Yet this is said to be less about punishment than a lesson in the importance of honesty — which is also why it was passed down as a way of teaching children.

A bright-red face, eyes flung wide, robes like a Tang-dynasty judge, a ritual tablet in hand — even such a fearsome image is not there merely to frighten. It can also be seen as a "mirror" set up to make people reflect on their own conduct.

Festivals connected with Enma

Enma has not simply been kept at arm's length as a figure of dread. The sixteenth of January and the sixteenth of July are called "Enma's feast days," when the lid of hell's cauldron is said to open and even demons and the dead take a rest. On these days there is a custom of visiting local Enma halls — a practice that overlapped with the "servants' holidays," when live-in workers returned to their families, and so grew dear to ordinary people. A judge who nonetheless draws quietly close at the turning points of daily life — this double face, too, speaks to the depth of Enma worship.

The Enma within Yurusen

This figure of Enma lives on in the world of the app "Yurusen." Lord Enma, who binds together the root of every ledger of judgment, is depicted standing at the deepest part of the Wraith Codex.

If Enma is the one who "judges" sin, then your own resolve when you decide you cannot forgive someone is also a form of judgment. The one who was wronged is under no obligation to let everything go. Yurusen is your private ledger, a place to quietly entrust feelings with nowhere else to go.

You can view Enma and the other wraiths on the Wraith Codex page.