“Hell Screen (地獄変)”: The ethical dilemma of an aestheticist painter

Hell Screen is a specific style of painting in eastern Asia, especially the area influenced by Chinese culture, such as Japan. This kind of painting demonstrate the Buddhist hell by depicting the sinners punished in it. Naturally, this short story “Hell Screen” introduced in this article fits the theme of this Paragone edition “Himmel/Helvete”. What’s more, the question raised in this short story that “what to do as an artist when the cost to complete a great work is to witness ‘hell’ or even become part of it” is rather vital than the superficial connection between the name of the story and our theme of this edition.

Source: Wikipedia

“Hell Screen (Japanese: 地獄変)” is Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (Japanese: 芥川 龍之介)’s masterpiece. In this short story based on Uji Shūi Monogatari, the plot centres on a painter named Yoshihide(Japanese: 良秀), who is considered “the greatest painter in the land” and is often commissioned to create works for the Lord of Horikawa. As “the greatest painter in the land”, Yoshihide is desperately short in imagination – he is not able to paint anything unless he actually sees it. Besides, he is so proud of his skill that he despises almost everyone around him include the Lord of Horikawa but his beautiful beloved 15 years old daughter, who is a servant of the Lord of Horikawa.

At the beginning of the story, the Lord of Horikawa asks Yoshihide to create a folding screen demonstrating the Buddhist hell. Yoshihide starts his painting by forces his apprentices to imitate the sinners tortured in Hell so that he would be able to portrait them. One of them is asked to be chained nakedly by iron chain, and the other is forced being pecked by a fearsome owl. Yoshihide is kind of enjoying these tortures. To be explicit, he is not enjoy watching someone being tortured exactly, but enjoy watching them so that he could finish his painting. 

His progress of painting goes smoothly during months until he notices that he wants to demonstrate a sinned noble lady burning in a delicate oxcart while he has never seen such a scene before. He is troubled by this annoyance for almost one month, finally he makes up his mind to pay a visit to the Lord of Horikawa. In the Lord’s villa, Yoshihide asks the Lord of Horikawa to burn a delicate oxcart right in front of him so that he can finish his painting. Periphrastically, maybe also a young beautiful lady in it. The Lord promises Horikawa that he will find and burn an oxcart right in front of Yoshihide.

The day of promise comes. On the yard of the Lord of Horikawa’s villa lays a well-furnished oxcart waiting to be burned in ashes. However, to his surprise, Yoshihide suddenly finds out there is also a beautiful young noble lady chained in the oxcart when he tries taking a close look at it. And she’s not a noble lady, but her 15 years old daughter who is dressed like one. “Light the cart”, the Lord says. The wooden oxcart catches on fire so fast that Yoshihide’s daughter is engulfed by the Hell-like flame right away. Yoshihide is shocked when he notices his daughter is burning in the middle of the fire, but soon enough, he comes to his sense and starts staring at the scene attentively. Everyone around him seems disappear. 

Source: Wikipedia

After this day, it doesn’t take long for Yoshihide to finish his Hell Screen painting, which is considered the greatest work of this “greatest painter in the land”, and he hangs himself right after he completes it.

There is no doubt that Yoshihide is an aestheticist artist who believes that the first and prime work of an artist is to portrait what he believes is aesthetic while the work itself and the effort to complete this work may be without utility or even more, is considered ethically wrong. In this short story, Yoshihide forces his apprentices to imitate the sinners in Hell to help him painting the Hell Screen. And when his daughter is chained and being burnt in the oxcart, he is shocked at the very beginning, but soon enough, the desire to complete his art completely takes control. 

The dilemma this “greatest painter in the land” faces is easy to demonstrate, to do something ethically right such as not forcing his apprentices to help him and trying to save his daughter form the burning oxcart, or finish his greatest work by any possible means. The answer of this painter is straight forward, in order to complete his work, he would even sacrifice his own daughter. However, the painter is not completely without conscience, he kills himself at the end of the story.

But what does the author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa thinks of Yoshihide’s dilemma? Or in other words, what would Akutagawa do if he is in the painter’s shoes?

In this short story “Hell Screen”, Akutagawa takes an objective view to tell the story, which means he doesn’t intervene in his story as much so that we are not able to tell the author’s attitude towards his characters. Nevertheless, in another short story named “The Life of a Fool”, which was actually an autobiographical story of the author himself and was also his last work before he committed suicide, we could almost be sure that Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is somehow a aestheticist artist as his character Yoshihide.

Source: Wikipedia

In this short story, the male protagonist “he” recalls that he once visited one of his fellow students, who was an doctor working in a mortuary, to take a close look of some dead bodies in order to complete one of his stories. “Ever bodies are in shortage these days.” Says his fellow student. “If bodies are in shortage, I would kill to get them (to help writing my story)”, he, who is actually the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa himself, answered silently in his mind. It’s clear that Akutagawa is like his character Yoshihide and what’s more, he won’t bother killing himself if he had done something like Yoshihide.

At the end of this article, we would not answer the question if it’s right to do something ethically wrong in order to create a art work which could become a masterpiece in the future. The only thing we want to do here is to introduce an short story concerning such dilemma of an Japanese writer, and only to raise an simple question: what would you do if you were in Yoshihide’s shoes?

Bibliography

Akutagawa, Ryûnosuke, and Seiji M. Lippit. The Essential Akutagawa : Rashomon, Hell Screen, Cogwheels, A Fool's Life and Other Short Fiction. New York: Marsilio, 1999.