Mourning the Unborn Dead A Buddhist Ritual Comes to America Review

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(More customer reviews)Jeff Wilson is a modern and highly regarded student of religion with a particular interest in Buddhism as it enters America and is developing and changing here. He has a particular expertise in Japanese practices.
For those who are interested in learning about the Buddhist ceremony for stillborn and aborted children as found in both America and Japan, this book describes and explains the history and concept, and compares Japanese and American practices in a manner that will almost certainly surprise and inform both ethnic and convert Buddhists, as well as members of other faiths. Who for instance would have suspected that a major US Zen Centre has no fewer than two statues of the Virgin Mary to comfort grieving parents? Wilson obtains his insights though careful research including 'hands on' experience through observation on both sides of the world and all over America.
For students of Buddhism, this book, like much of Wilson's work, is an important source of information about the several Japanese Buddhist sects that have come to America and how they are developing here- one cannot recommend it highly enough in that regard. Wilson's works will continue be a major source of information for students of religion long after we have all moved on to other realms.

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Many Western visitors to Japan have been struck by the numerous cemeteries for aborted fetuses, which are characterized by throngs of images of the Bodhisattva Jizo, usually dressed in red baby aprons or other baby garments, and each dedicated to an individual fetus. Abortion is common in Japan and as a consequence one of the frequently performed rituals in Japanese Buddhism is mizuko-kuyo, a ceremony for aborted and miscarried fetuses. Over the past forty years, mizuko-kuyo has gradually come to America, where it has been appropriated by non-Buddhists as well as Buddhist practitioners. In this book, Jeff Wilson examines how and why Americans of different backgrounds have brought knowledge and performance of this Japanese ceremony to the United States. Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork in Japan and the U.S., as well as the literature in both Japanese and English, Wilson shows that the meaning and purpose of the ritual have changed greatly in the American context. In Japan, mizuko-kuyo is performed to placate the potentially dangerous spirit of the angry fetus. In America, however, it has come to be seen as a way for the mother to mourn and receive solace for her loss. Many American women who learn about mizuko-kuyo are struck by the lack of such a ceremony and see it as filling a very important need. Ceremonies are now performed even for losses that took place many years ago. Wilson's well-written study not only contributes to the growing literature on American Buddhism, but sheds light on a range of significant issues in Buddhist studies, interreligious contact, women's studies, and even bioethics.

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