Roe Wade
Guilt offerings
Special Buddhist temples memorialize the unborn dead in Japan, but they don’t solve the problem of post-abortion trauma by SOPHIA LEE IN KAMAKURA, JAPAN
a wooded hill in Kamakura, a quiet coastal city about a two-hour train ride from Tokyo. I visited Hasedera on a drizzly, dreary November weekend: Water dripped everywhere—beads of liquid Hasedera Temple in dribbled down the umbrellas Kamakura, Japan of visitors, down tree (above); mizuko-jizo branches, down the curved statues at Hasedera roofs of the medieval period Temple (right) Buddhist temple. A pond shimmered with the silvers and tangerines of koi. Hasedera is not a familiar destination for foreign tourists. Its main historical asset is its 30-foot gilded wooden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. On the steps up to Kannon, 46 WORLD Magazine • January 20, 2018
HASEDERA TEMPLE: MADSOLAR/SHUTTERSTOCK • MIZUKO-JIZO: FORSTER/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES
Hasedera Temple leans against the slope of
however, is a cemetery that outsiders can easily mistake for a pretty garden. To locals, that spot is a less trumpeted but more significant attraction of Hasedera: a site filled with hundreds of gray stone statues that represent the souls of dead unborn babies. Some were stillborn, some miscarried, but most were dead from abortion. These 1-foot-tall statues, called mizuko-jizo, are shaped like bald monks with hands clasped in prayer. They surround the entire area in tiered rows carved into hills and rocks. Their eyes—tiny crescent-moon-shaped ridges—are half-closed, as though praying or resting; their lips are turned up slightly yet not quite smiling; their stance and their long robes are rigid. Some have fresh flowers before them; most don’t. Their innocent-looking, pacified faces can pass for either an infant’s or a god’s, neither living nor completely dead, like well-dressed, finely powdered corpses in open coffins. Hasedera is one of the most famous and earliest temples in Japan to offer mizuko kuyo, a Buddhist memorial service for dead unborn babies that’s unique to Japan. Parents from all over the region travel to Hasedera, hoping that a mizuko kuyo would help alleviate their guilt, grief, and regret over their babies’ deaths. The temple estimates placing more than 50,000 mizuko-jizo statues on temple grounds since post–World War II—and still receives up to 20 requests a day for mizuko kuyo. Nobody knows exactly when the practice of mizuko kuyo began, but for centuries, parents have been erecting roadside shrines dedicated to babies dead from miscarriages, abortions, and infanticide. Yet it wasn’t until the 1970s—after
