Generally speaking, ordinary Japanese people believe in heaven and hell.
After death, people will be placed in front of the Enmadaiou who is the imaginary judge of people's behavior in their lifetime. He chooses people who spent their life honorably and they will be able to live in heaven, but others will be confined to hell. The topic of this entry, "Jigoku", is the Japanese word for "hell".
There are several places which are named Jigoku blah blah blah across the country and I wrote about one of them 4 years ago, Jigokudani in this entry(link). Additionally, the Enmadaiou was also displayed in the shopping street near Jigokudani. It mechanically performed the trial and its face turned a forbidding countenance on seeing bad people.
As you'd expect, the scenery of Jigokudani is reasonable so that we think that hell must be like this; terribly hot water and steam belch out from the rifts of the earth here and there, no plants, no animals, not even the most tiny ones, and everything around is surrounded by hydrogen sulphide gas.
Now, getting back to the story about Beppu City, there are lots of Jigoku in this city. The "Chinoike Jigoku" is a lake which springs boiling red hot water from its bed. We know scientifically that the color of red is from the iron in the water, but we compare the red water to blood. "Chinoike" means the lake of blood. Don't you think that it is a suitable name for Jigoku?
I'll post pictures of a kind of Jigoku.
Did you find a pole in the first picture? It's never a fishing pole.
(Vocabulary)
honorably 道徳的に, 道義的に; りっぱに, 誠実に, 公正に
belch げっぷをする [同意] burp
belch sth ↔ out 〈煙・炎など〉を吹き出す
belch out 〈煙・炎などが〉 吹き出る, 噴出する
forbidding 近寄りがたい, 怖い
countenance (フォーマル)顔つき, 顔の表情, 容貌
rift (岩などの) 裂け目, (雲の) 切れ間
compare [他] …をなぞらえる, 例える
compare sth/sb to sth/sb ＜…＞を＜…＞になぞらえる［例える］
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