Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 1988 15/1 Buddhism and Abortion in Contemporary Japan: Mizuho KuyO

While based on research which began intensively in 1986 and which will extend over more than two years, this particular article is not a report on that research but an initial attempt to view the contemporary phenomenon of mizuko kuyd upon a wider socio-religious background in modern Japan. Briefly, this phenomenon represents emotional problems encountered by large numbers of Japanese women following an abortion experience, and ef forts by Buddhism and other reli^ous groups in Japan to respond to these problems. Once the field research has been completed,1 we shall be^n to for mulate in some detail our own understanding of the diverse ingredients within this phenomenon. The primary research is of several kinds. It includes extensive interviews with temple priests and with women who have experienced the loss of a child. We have also distributed over three thousand questionnaires to worshipers who have participated in memorial services (kuyd) for aborted and/or stillborn children (mizuko). Beyond thi ^ we have access to data being col lected on mizuko kuyd by sociologists at a major Japanese national university, and to more than twelve hundred questionnaires completed by women at an important temple in Kyoto. Finally, we have collected sizable amounts of published materials in Japanese which deal directly with abortion and mizuko kuyd，or which seek to relate these to wider social and religious issues of both a contemporary and historical nature. In part because it will take longer to digest these materials, this present essay will not refer to them directly. The General Context As many readers may have seen, two articles on mizuko kuyd have already appeared in this journal, one by Anne Page Brooks (1981) and, more recentl