Mizuko- Japanese ConceptConcept"Water Children"

Sai no Kawara

Mizuko are the water children: spirits of those who died through miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or who lived only days. The name carries the sense of something unfinished, a life that never solidified. They entered existence but left before accumulating the karma or receiving the rites to pass through the afterlife.

Their destination is Sai no Kawara, a stony riverbed at the border of the underworld. The medieval Sai no Kawara Jizō Wasan describes what happens there. The children are made to stack small stones into towers as offerings for their grieving parents. Before any tower is finished, demons appear and scatter the stones. The children begin again. The cycle repeats without end until Jizō Bosatsu appears on the riverbed. He gathers the children into the folds of his robe and shields them from the demons.

This scene gave the roadsides and temple grounds of Japan their rows of small Jizō statues dressed in red bibs, surrounded by pinwheels and toy offerings. Each statue stands for a child someone lost.

Mizuko Kuyō

The memorial service for water children, mizuko kuyō, centers on the dedication of a small Jizō statue at a temple. Families bring offerings and sutra recitation to ease the child's passage and express grief. Some temples maintain entire gardens of these figures, hundreds of small stone faces in quiet rows, each wearing a hand-knitted cap and bib. The wind turns the pinwheels left beside them.