I had never previously considered that there is no word in English for a miscarried or aborted fetus. In Japanese it is mizuko , which is typically translated as ''water child.'' Historically, Japanese Buddhists believed that existence flowed into a being slowly, like liquid. Children solidified only gradually over time and weren't considered to be fully in our world until they reached the age of 7. Similarly, leaving this world -- returning to the primordial waters -- was seen as a process that began at 60 with the celebration of a symbolic second birth. According to Paula K.R. Arai, author of ''Women Living Zen'' and one of several authorities I later turned to for help in understanding the ritual, the mizuko lies somewhere along the continuum, in that liminal space between life and death but belonging to neither. True to the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, it was expected (and still is today) that Jizo would eventually help the mizuko find another pathway into being. ''You're trying to send the mizuko off, wishing it well in the life that it will have to come,'' Arai says. ''Because there's always a sense that it will live at another time.''
Jizo rituals were originally developed and practiced by women.
According to William R. LaFleur, author of ''Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan,'' there is evidence of centuries-old roadside shrines marking miscarriages, abortions, stillbirths and the deaths of young children (particularly by infanticide, which was once widespread in Japan). But it wasn't until the late 1970's, when abortion rates peaked, that mizuko kuyo, the ritual of apology and remembrance, with its rows of Jizo statues, became commonplace. Abortion was legalized in Japan after World War II; it is viewed, in that country, as a regrettable necessity. Rates remain high -- perhaps twice as high as the officially reported figure of 22 per 1,000 women, which is the same as the rate in the United States. The high incidence of abortion is partly a result of the fact that access to the pill was restricted until 1999 because of fears about its safety and its impact on the environment, concerns that it would encourage promiscuity and disease and, not incidentally, because of pressure from doctors for whom abortion is lucrative.
Even so, the procedure itself has been neither particularly controversial nor politicized. There is no real equivalent in Japan to our ''pro-life'' movement. The Japanese tend to accept both the existence of abortion and the idea that the mizuko is a form of life. I wondered how they could reconcile what seem to me such mutually exclusive viewpoints. But maybe that's the wrong question: maybe I should wonder why we can't.
LaFleur estimates that about half of Japanese women perform mizuko kuyo after aborting. They may participate in a formal service, with a priest officiating, or make an informal offering. A woman may light a candle and say a prayer at a local temple. She may leave a handwritten message of apology on a wooden tablet. She may make an offering of food, drink, flowers, incense or toys. The ritual may be a one-time act or it may be repeated monthly or annually. She may purchase her own Jizo statue (costing an average of about $500) or toss a few hundred yen into a coin box at a roadside shrine. Sometimes couples perform mizuko kuyo together. If they already have children, LaFleur says, they may bring them along to honor what is considered, in some sense, a departed sibling: the occasion becomes as much a reunion as a time to grieve. Mizuko kuyo contains elements that would both satisfy and disturb Westerners on either side of the abortion debate: there is public recognition and spiritual acknowledgment that a potential life has been lost, remorse is expressed, yet there is no shame over having performed the act.
There was no mistaking Zozo-ji. It was a huge complex of epic buildings with a football-field-size courtyard. I walked among the rows of mizuko Jizos searching for a spot to place my toys. Some of the babies' caps, which women crochet by hand, had rotted with age to just a few discolored strands. It was dank and gloomy under the trees. A black cat eyed me from a ledge. It seemed a bad omen.
I wouldn't find out until months later, when I returned to America, that there is another, darker side to mizuko kuyo. Over the past few decades, temples dedicated solely to the ritual have sprung up all over Japan, luring disciples by stressing the malevolent potential of the fetus: whether miscarried or aborted, it could become angry over being sent back. If not properly placated, it could seek revenge. In the mid-80's, when mizuko kuyo was at its peak, some entrepreneurial temples placed ominous advertisements in magazines: Are your existing children doing poorly in school? Are you falling ill more easily than before? Has your family suffered a financial setback? That's because you've neglected your mizuko.
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