ABSTRACT
In many Japanese religious institutions, hundreds of statuettes, often dressed in red hats and bibs, have been erected en masse since the 1970s. They are Mizuko Jizō, or Bodhisattva water babies, the guardians of the aborted fetuses. However, as this chapter argues, they have become the materialisation of the fetus itself. A ceremony, mizuko kuyō, is performed to make an offering to appease the fetus represented in the media as an “evil spirit.” The statue-fetus is materialised as a peaceful child that the practitioners of the ritual can dress and take care of, thus acknowledging women’s relationship to their aborted fetuses.
