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.