There may indeed be "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in human philosophy, as Hamlet told faithful Horatio, but when it comes to hell, the human imagination needs little prompting. From Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" to the Bible itself, hell and its tempting concomitant, sin, have always been set more vividly before our eyes than virtue and its heavenly rewards.

"Paradise and Hell Depicted," a new exhibition of Buddhist paintings showing at the Idemitsu Museum of Art until June 2, shows that this preoccupation with the more fearful of mankind's purported afterlife alternatives isn't the exclusive preserve of fire 'n' brimstone Christian preaching.

Indeed, those visitors familiar with Western depictions of hell and its tortures will recognize much in this handful of exquisite early Buddhist works, produced during the Nara to Muromachi periods (eighth-16th centuries). The two scrolls of "Ten Kings of Hell and Scenes of Punishment" show the tortures of the damned: Sinners burdened with stones are forced to climb over a molten lake, others are frozen into a sea of ice; some are pounded in a mighty pestle by powerful demons, yet others are ingeniously dismembered.

But while the general themes are recognizable, there are both intriguing details particular to Buddhist eschatology and elements that spring from the individual artist's imagination.

Curator Hirokazu Yatsunami drew my attention to the figure of a woman being bisected laterally by two devils wielding a timber saw while another, pinned to the ground, is planed with a wooden tool. "These are typical carpenter's instruments of the time," he said. "This artist is drawing on the world he knew to represent this world of the afterlife."

The unknown artist's imagination took off creatively in other directions, too. The "Ten Kings of Hell" scrolls are notable for their predominance of female sinners -- highly unusual in an age when such pieces were commissioned by and intended for the edification of elite males.

One common motif was the toyorin, a mountain covered with thorns as sharp as swords, up which the lustful crawl toward a desirable member of the opposite sex -- here, an attractive young man. As the sinner approaches his or her goal, the figure disappears, only to reappear at the foot of the mountain. Ascent and descent are endlessly repeated until the sinner is sliced into pieces. Then comes judgment, rebirth and -- given the prevailing view that lust was deeply ingrained in human nature -- "perhaps tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years of repetition until that sin is dead," Yatsunami explained.

Nonetheless, the undeniable advantage that Buddhist eschatology has over the Christian concept of everlasting hell is that all this torment does end eventually. Indeed, as the demographic of Buddhist believers changed -- the faith filtering gradually down the social hierarchy -- it brought the need for a more humane theology. Common folk were often necessitated by their lifestyle to commit acts that strict Buddhist thought condemned as unclean, such as wearing leather or slaughtering animals. Upon their death, these people would be staring hell right in the face. Its torments are unsparingly set out in Genshin's influential 985 text "Ojo Yoshu (The Essentials of Rebirth in Paradise)."

What emerged was salvation theology. Folk belief found comfort in the idea that, condemned by their own sin, the faithful would nonetheless be plucked from hell by merciful bodhisattvas. Scenes from "The Six Realms of Rebirth" (16th century) show radiant beings using a staff to hook sinners from a boiling lake, or watching over children, condemned to build pagodas of stones in expiation of their sin at having died too young to repay their parents with filial gratitude.

From the Kamakura Period (1192-1333) onward, cults of individual bodhisattvas spread. The most popular were Jizo and Kannon, and glowing 14th-century depictions of each being, staff in hand and haloed in gold, are on display at the Idemitsu.

The ultimate source of compassion, however, was the Amida Buddha himself. The desire of worshippers to draw closer to this salvific being was reflected in an artistic trend showing the Buddha approaching closer to the viewer. The radiant "Amida and Attendant Bodhisattvas Coming Across the Mountains" (14th century), shows the Buddha looming gentle and impassive behind low peaks. In the foreground, two bodhisattvas bow in welcome.

"Such pictures would have been viewed by people on their deathbed," Yatsunami says. "The dying would look up and see Amida waiting, ready to cross over to them, and they would know that paradise was very close."

The final item shown here is the 14th-century "Taima Mandala," an intricate brown-and-gold painting of the Western Paradise. Framing the central scene are three strip-panels, two depicting Buddhist legends and the third showing scenes of the faithful soul's welcome into heaven.

"The paradise scene remained almost unchanged, artistically speaking," says Yatsunami. "The welcoming scenes are where we see the most creativity from the artist. For example, the Buddha cloud is shown moving diagonally across the pictorial plane, as if descending with great speed. The welcome becomes more accelerated, because people were longing for deliverance."

More than merely images of salvation, such paradise paintings were tools for achieving deliverance. The "Taima Mandala" included a sutra that the layperson could chant while contemplating the work. If he did so faithfully, he need have no fear even of hell, despite the vividness with which its horrors were painted. "Even for a single good deed or thought of the Buddha," says Yatsunami, "Jizo would rescue souls."