Apologizing to the babies. (Japanese ritual for aborted bodies)

Joan Frawley  Desmond

The Human Life Review

Winter 1997
Vol.23 No.1
pp.117-120

COPYRIGHT @ 1997 Human Life Foundation Inc.


            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.)