Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

M IZUKO
K UYO
See also: Buddhahood and Buddha Bodies; Buddha,
Life of the; Disciples of the Buddha; Relics and Relics
Cults
Bibliography
Gómez, Luis O. “The Bodhisattva as Wonder-Worker.” In Prajñaparamita
and Related Systems: Studies in Honor of Edward
Conze, ed. Lewis Lancaster. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Buddhist
Studies Series, 1977.
Kieschnick, John. The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval
Chinese Hagiography. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1997.
Nakamura, Kyoko Motomochi. Miraculous Stories from the
Japanese Buddhist Tradition: The Nihon ryo iki of the Monk
Kyo kai. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973.
Ray, Reginald A. Buddhist Saints in India: A Study in Buddhist
Values and Orientations. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994.
Thomas, Edward J. The Life of Buddha as Legend and History
(1927). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.
Woodward, Kenneth L. The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of
the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism,
and Islam. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
MIZUKO KUYO
JOHN KIESCHNICK
Mizuko kuyo is a Japanese rite performed at Buddhist
temples for the repose of aborted fetuses. Mizuko, literally
“water child,” is the modern term used for fetus,
and kuyo refers to rituals for making offerings. Mizuko
kuyo was popular particularly in the 1970s and 1980s,
and is still performed at many Buddhist temples.
Japanese Buddhists are divided in their attitudes toward
mizuko kuyo . The Shin (true) Pure Land school
(Jodo Shinshu) is opposed officially to this rite on the
grounds that it is based on the superstitious fear that
spirits of the dead can curse the living. Others criticize
the rite as a moneymaking scheme made popular
through advertisements designed to make women feel
guilty about abortions and the anguish of the aborted
fetuses, who will surely curse those who killed them.
Defenders of the rite argue that mizuko kuyo provides
the same ritual service that funeral and memorial rites
do in commemorating and caring for the deceased.
Associated with mizuko kuyo is the practice of dedicating
a sculpted image of Ksitigarbha (Japanese, Jizo),
the BODHISATTVA who protects children, by tying a baby
bib around its neck. Parents inscribe the bib with the
name of the child, and often include words of apology
and regret. While some of these words can be interpreted
as expressions of guilt arising from the clear
sense of moral wrongdoing, they more often express
sadness and regret for having done something circumstantially
unavoidable but not morally reprehensible.
See also: Abortion
Bibliography
Hardacre, Helen. Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997.
LaFleur, William R. Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in
Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
GEORGE J. TANABE, JR.
MODERNITY AND BUDDHISM
No religion has a greater claim to embodying modernity
than Buddhism. This assertion can be supported
by examining what is meant by modernity, and by relating
this modernity to the doctrinal characteristics of
Buddhism. The term modernity derives from Latin
modernus, which itself derives from the adverb modo,
a term that since the fifth century C.E. was equivalent
to nunc (now). During the European Middle Ages
one’s status as modernus required distinguishing oneself
from the antiqui. Modernity, then, is to be understood
as requiring an act of self-conscious distantiation
from a past in which ignorance or naiveté prevailed.
More specifically, modernity has required moving
from an organic to a mechanic conception of the cosmos
and society, from hierarchy to equality, from the
corporate to the individual, and from an understanding
of reality in which everything resonates with everything
else to an understanding built around precision
and the increasing differentiation of domains. Ultimately,
modernity has had to do with the perpetual
questioning of one’s presuppositions. In terms of religion,
modernity has generally involved the rejection of
a symbolic view of reality and of anthropomorphic
conceptions of the divinity, and, even more radically,
the rejection of any notion of transcendence. When
discussing modernity in the context of Western history,
this process has been understood above all as involving
a movement away from religion. Both in
Christian and Buddhist terms, however, such a view is
problematic to the extent that the process of differen-
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