@inproceedings{oai:kokubunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00002036,
 author = {林, 雅彦 and HAYASHI, Masahiko},
 book = {国際日本文学研究集会会議録, PROCEEDINGS OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JAPANESE LITERATURE},
 issue = {4},
 month = {Feb},
 note = {pdf, The Kumano bikuni (Buddhist priestesses), by virtue of their offices, were called kanjin bikuni (the religious educator bikuni); they were also known as etoki bikuni (the explainer with pictures bikuni) or uta bikuni (the singer bikuni). Originally, it seems that after making the pilgrimage to the shrines at Kumano and Ise, they travelled around Japan selling the Kumano amulets called Okarasusan （“the holy crows“) after the pattern of crows printed on them and other charms as well as working to teach and spread the Kumano faith through telling stories, teaching with pictures, and singing while keeping time with a kind of instrument, the sasara.
As can be seen in the existence of such expressions as ari no Kumano-mairi for throngs of people like ants and ari no towatari for people going along a narrow path like ants, the Kumano faith ranked high among the folk religions of the middle ages. And yet practically no materials from the time remain today concerning the educational activities of the Kumano bikuni or of their particular speciality of teaching by using pictures of heaven and hell. However, through the use of modern documents and paintings, we can form some picture of the activities of the Kumano bikuni in the middle ages and early modern ages, even if it must necessarily remain an indistinct and fuzzy one. 
The teaching through pictures (etoki) of the Kumano bikuni used heaven and hell pictures centering on hell pictures relating to women such as the lake of blood hell and the barren woman hell. There are some differences in content, but in addition to the hell pictures already present in the Nara period, stories with the theme of hell were also frequent, as you undoubtedly know, in such genres as setsuwa bungαku (narrative, legendary literature) and otogi zōshi (books of stories for women and children). A form of popular entertainment (sekkyobushi) graphically teaching about the Sai riverbed in hell also seems to have existed. In this paper, I want to consider the teaching with pictures (etoki) of the kumano bikuni from the viewpoint of the hell tale literature.},
 pages = {109--123},
 publisher = {国文学研究資料館},
 title = {研究発表 熊野比丘尼の絵解き ―「地獄語りの文芸」試論―},
 year = {1981},
 yomi = {ハヤシ, マサヒコ}
}