Japan has been called "abortion heaven." The Ministry of Health and
Welfare reported 364,350 abortions in 1994, though that figure does
not include abortions by the private physicians whose lucrative
business has reportedly blocked distribution of the birth control
pill. In a 1982 survey conducted by the Kyodo News Service, about 60
percent of women in their forties with college degrees and
executive-level husbands admitted having had one or more abortions.
No one in Japan seems willing to speak about the moral brutality of
the Japanese custom of abortion used as birth control. Even a Jesuit
missionary, residing there for half a century, cannot recall a
single homily on the subject. Japan's abortion industry appears to
drift along by itself, an anomaly in a relatively nonviolent
society, graced by intact families and safe streets.
And yet, though there is no public debate, the unborn have not been
forgotten. With no prompting, Japanese couples have begun
acknowledging their role in the death of their own unborn child.
They have done this not through talk-show therapy, but in a
ritualized, thoroughly Japanese, manner. While couples bow to the
necessity of abortion - saying, shikata ganai, "there's nothing to
be done" - millions have been drawn to a Buddhist cult devoted to
Jizo, the protector of aborted, miscarried, and stillborn children.
Once a minor bodhisattva in the Buddhist pantheon, Jizo has revived
the fortunes of local temples that perform mizuko kuyo, the ritual
designed to assist in the peaceful resettlement of "returned"
children who cannot pass alone across the river separating the
living from the dead.
The Jizo figurines crowd hillside cemeteries, coastal promontories,
and city temples. In Kamakura, just to the side of the famous
Hasedera Temple, is an area devoted to a flourishing Jizo cult, with
a large covered statue of the bodhisattva surrounded by a battalion
of small Jizo figures, some of them decorated with traditional red
capes or bibs, a few even accompanied by toys. A message board
stands next to the bodhisattva, allowing parents to leave signed
apologies and prayers.
The Jizo figurines (which cost about $80), fresh flowers, and other
gifts can be purchased at the main temple. The statues remain in
place for some time, after which a formal offering is made for the
soul of the aborted child. At the site, a short, printed explanation
of the plight of "returned" souls - known as mizuko, or water
children - suggests that they will remain in limbo if parents
neglect their religious obligations.
There is just a hint of coercion here, but it is enough to provoke
accusations of extortion from feminists and others who believe the
cult manipulates guilt-ridden parents. The Hasedera Temple skirts
the threat of tatari, or retribution, from the souls of aborted
children. But some new temples and cemeteries devoted to the Jizo
cult have gained a reputation for both questionable theology (the
mizuko kuyo ritual becoming an implicit kind of exorcism), and,
occasionally, even criminal blackmail for money to forestall bad
luck.
Buddhist scholars, too, are uncomfortable with the Jizo phenomenon,
which borrows heavily from medieval Japanese folk practices and
Shinto beliefs. But it is significant that Buddhist thinkers avoid
the moral issues that preoccupy Western societies. Rather, scholars
bemoan the cult's accommodation of tatari, as well as the garish
commercial trappings. Within Buddhism, few seem prepared to address
the ambiguous, even mysterious motives of Jizo devotees. Yet
Buddhist leaders have not blocked the cult. Temple priests
understand that this grassroots movement plays an essential role in
Japanese culture, filling the moral vacuum that organized religion
has left untouched.
Jizo began to attract followers in the 1970s, after a decade of
steadily rising abortion rates. The cult defies simple explanations,
and Westerners should not shrug off this memorial service as a
peculiar, if haunting, foreign custom. Its importance lies in its
revelation of the damaging consequences of abortion. Despite the
lack of moral guidance, Japanese parents want to admit wrongdoing.
At the same time, however, the narrow scope of the ritual (which
promises purification without conversion of the heart) serves as a
warning of what the West could become: a society that goes on
without a thought of redemption.
In the past, even when abortion was officially illegal, the Japanese
exhibited a pragmatic approach to new life that threatened the
survival or prosperity of the family. Many feudal peasants - along
with wealthier Japanese - practiced infanticide as a method of
"spacing" children in medieval times. And while Japanese Buddhism
officially frowned on such practices, local monks sympathized with
the plight of overburdened peasants.
The thorough penetration of Confucianism and Shintoism into Japanese
Buddhism produced a patchwork religion that shrank from moral
absolutes, including the commandment against killing. It may be true
that infanticide was occasionally practiced in medieval Europe, but
Catholic theology never condoned the destruction of developing human
life. In contrast to medieval Catholicism, writes William LaFleur -
author of an important, if partisan, study, Liquid Life: Abortion
and Buddhism in Japan - Japan's Buddhists "saw life as a kind of
ontological chess; its movements could be forward, lateral, or
backward on the board. This opened up a wider range of
possibilities."
The moral force of Japanese Buddhism was also stunted by another
trend in the nation's development: organized religion's submission
to political power. This pattern of church-state relations
eventually resulted in the ascendance of "Japanism" (described by
Karel van Wolferen in The Enigma of Japanese Power as a "surrogate
religious force"). As secular authority became fundamental, Buddhism
lost its moral force. Today most Japanese view Buddhism as a
funerary component of an undifferentiated Japanese religion,
characterized by a preference for ritual activity over transcendent
spiritual and moral beliefs.
During the early modern era, political leaders, not temple priests,
challenged the "culling" of unwanted children. The Meiji Restoration
of the 1860s paved the way for the criminalization of abortion,
though a penal code largely imported from France could not dislodge
the feudal vision of human life as ontological chess. Much later, in
the years preceding the Second World War, Tokyo sought to increase
birth rates to fuel its war effort. Abortion was viewed as a
political crime, and state Shintoism applauded parents who produced
large numbers of children. After the war, a baby boom spurred a
dramatic return to illegal abortions, leading the government to
introduce the 1948 Eugenic Protection Laws that opened the door to
abortion-on-demand by the following year.
The democratic, affluent Japan of the 1990s has moved beyond the
political and economic conditions that shaped the nation during the
thirties and forties. Yet, wartime and even medieval Japan surface
in unpredictable and surprising ways. Certainly the past has tainted
any attempt to carve out a political solution to the problem of
abortion. While Catholics quietly provide anti-abortion counseling
and services for unwed mothers, only the neo-Shintoists occasionally
denounce abortion publicly - and Japan's steeply declining birth
rate may be the prime reason for this concern.
While political-legal intervention remains unlikely, the Jizo cult
has emerged as a stopgap response to abortion. Some observers
contend that Japanese parents participate in the ritual as a way of
affirming their essential goodness. According to LaFleur, prayers,
gifts, and financial donations reverse the impression that one's
child has been treated summarily and dehumanized.
Possibly, the affluence of modern Japan has deepened distaste for
abortion, which can no longer be explained away as a necessity for
family survival. Or perhaps Japanese women want to move beyond both
the moral passivity and the childlike dependence on physicians'
directives that have fed the high abortion rate. Whatever the
reasons, the number of abortions is falling among younger married
women.
Abroad, the popularity of the Jizo cult has provoked a mixed
response from activists on both sides of the abortion debate. Citing
the cult, American pro-lifers argue that even non-Christian cultures
recognize that abortion involves the destruction of human life. But
feminist writer Naomi Wolf, in a 1995 New Republic cover story, "Our
Bodies, Our Souls," noted the Jizo ritual and seemed to imply that a
Westernized form of the memorial service might soothe consciences
troubled by abortion guilt. The appearance of mizuko kuyo in Wolf's
article seems a sign of desperation within pro-choice ranks. Most
Americans, whatever their view of abortion, have been shaped by a
notion of developing human life as unique and unrepeatable. Even if
a Westernized memorial service shed the original Buddhist trappings,
few participants could consciously embrace two colliding positions:
the acknowledgement of abortion as the killing of an unborn child,
and the decision to abort one's own child.
In Japan, the landscape is quite different. The nation's guiding
ethical principles remain largely situational, and almost infinitely
pliable, tranquilizing the conscience while providing an easy target
for political manipulation. The weakness of organized religion has
permitted a hodge-podge system of morality and ritual to establish
itself, one that provides a primitive form of consolation despite
its internal contradictions.
The following article appeared in the monthly journal First Things
(October, 1996) and is reprinted here with permission. Mrs. Desmond
is a teacher and writer who recently returned after four years in
Japan. ([C] 1996 by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, New
York, N.Y.)