Narratives of Sorrow and Dignity: Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving. Oxford University Press, 2013 (Oxford Ritual Studies).

ISBN 978-0-19-994215-2 (pbk)

Author:  Smith, Bardwell L.

Preface

1. Mizuko Kuyō: Memorial Services for Child Loss in Japan
2. Architectural, Iconographic, and Doctrinal Features of Mizuko Kuyō
3. Situating the Rites of Mourning: Two Temples and a Variety of Visitors
4. The Phenomena of Mizuko Kuyō: Responses to Pregnancy Loss
5. Japanese Woman as Housewife, Mother, and Worker: Patterns of Change and Continuity (1868–2010)
6. Ancestors, Angry Spirits, and the Unborn: Caring for the Dead on the Path to Ancestorhood
7. Mothers, Society, and Pregnancy Loss: Rethinking the Meaning of Nurture
8. The Revival of Death, the Rebirth of Grieving, and Ways of Mourning
9. Rituals of Affliction: An Invitation to Sobriety
Acknowledgements
Appendices
Notes
Note on Transliteration
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography
Index

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Description:

Narratives of Sorrow and Dignity would be of interest to a wide range of readers (academic and non-academic), because of the sensitivity with which it deals with key issues in the human condition through its study of the Japanese phenomenon mizuko kuyo: conception, birth, ritual, and loss. Anyone who has experienced pregnancy loss will be able to relate to the stories of Japanese women’s and men’s experiences of mourning and strategies for overcoming emotions that can be overwhelming. This also shows how people with very different religious practices cope with similar problems.

The author’s inclusion of participating women’s (and men’s) voices in the debates around various forms of pregnancy loss humanizes the phenomenon and gives the study more validity in terms of feminist social science research practice.  Feminist and gender studies readers – concerned with conceptualizations of, commodification of, and politics of the human body – will be interested, perhaps even challenged by the author’s interpretation of mizuko kuyo practice.  Ultimately, the author leaves the reader with a contextualized and holistic understanding of mizuko kuyo practice, and yet not all questions are (or can be) answered.  The author’s work demonstrates the limits to understanding meaning and knowledge-making within the realms of human emotion, ritual, and practice.

The work fits as well within the field of academic religious studies. Religious scholars and students interested in the tensions between doctrinal and devotional expressions of religion and how these interact on each other would find in rituals not only for an aborted fetus but for various forms of pregnancy loss vivid instances of the same phenomenon.  They may also find that the work is useful, methodologically, in demonstrating how a variety of fields – in this case, Japanese history, literature and anthropology – impact field study approaches to religion. This book should be of interest to scholars of Japanese studies and Asian area studies more generally.

“What sets this volume apart from other studies of mizuko kuyo is the vivid narratives of grief, anger, fear, guilt, and doubt surrounding the death of a loved one—especially an unborn child, whether through miscarriage or abortion—that illuminate an experience shared by an astounding number of Japanese women. Bardwell Smith weaves together the religiously complex and ritually engaged responses by which they integrate such loss into their lives.”

—Paula Arai, Professor of Buddhist Studies, Louisiana State University