Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The first comprehensive study in English of the Japanese hell figure Datsueba explores her evolution since her eleventh-century emergence as a terrifying old woman who strips the clothes of the dead in the afterworld.
Drawing widely on literature, art, and worship practices, the author reveals how the creative utilization of Datsueba’s key attributes—including a marker of borders, a keeper of cloth, and an elderly woman—transformed her into a guardian of the human journey through life and death and shaped a figure that is diverse and multifaceted, yet also strikingly recognizable across the centuries.
Drawing widely on literature, art, and worship practices, the author reveals how the creative utilization of Datsueba’s key attributes—including a marker of borders, a keeper of cloth, and an elderly woman—transformed her into a guardian of the human journey through life and death and shaped a figure that is diverse and multifaceted, yet also strikingly recognizable across the centuries.
Price: $159.00
Pages: 268
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Publication Date:
21 July 2022
ISBN: 9789004514416
Format: Hardcover
"The concluding remarks give a comprehensive overview of the previous chapters and shed light on Saka’s intent to provide a complete understanding of the various facets involving Datsueba’s features and worship, different in each region and tradition. This volume is a must-read
for scholars interested in female deities and other-worldly imagery in East Asia." - Marzia Alteno, in: Religious Studies Review, 47/3 (2021)
"...this is an impressive work, which makes an important contribution not only to our understanding of Datsueba, but also more broadly to the complex ways in which religious ideas and cultural practices came to be intertwined in Japan." - Rajyashree PANDEY, Japan Review 40 (2025).
"...this is an impressive work, which makes an important contribution not only to our understanding of Datsueba, but also more broadly to the complex ways in which religious ideas and cultural practices came to be intertwined in Japan." - Rajyashree PANDEY, Japan Review 40 (2025).
Chihiro Saka, PhD (2019), Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Japan), is Project Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). Her published papers include “Functions of Cloth in Datsueba Worship” (Japanese Religions, Spring and Fall 2018).