The myth of the Jizo, Zojoji temple

Japan📍

Chubby cheeks and cheeky smiles, with his eyes, gently shut, peacefully and endlessly sleeping.

Wearing red knitted hats and bibs, the Jizō 地蔵 spends his days sitting soundlessly beside sidewalks and quiet footpaths, watching the traffic and footsteps flow by. Sometimes he will be waiting patiently outside a train station, awaiting the return of his loved ones. All the same, you will spot the Jizo and his fellow companions in beautiful gardens and Buddhist temples, basking in the morning sun and the sweet honey hums of chants.

Every day the local women come by to shelter and keep the Jizo company. They mumble about their fate and as they dress Jizo's cold stone skin in auspicious protective red colours and warm knits and bibs, they pray for the lost souls that were never found to find a loving home. For the Jizo is the protector of children that never got to see the light; never born into the world. The women are the mothers who have suffered and lost, through cruel misfortune and unsolvable decisions made. They are also expecting women, nurturing the soul, that soon will be born into their arms. You see, the Jizo is the guard and the protector of these young souls, not to mention a healer offering closure to their mothers.

In Tokyo, you will find the Zojoji temple, known for its cemetery for unborn children. Its beautiful gardens are filled with Jizo statues, where locals come to pray daily.

Dwelling into the realm of Japanese mythology, the lost souls of young children travel to Yomi-no-Kuni 黄泉の国, only to end up at the boundary of life and the afterlife, a space of limbo, Sai No Kawara 西の河原. A place where they are punished for causing great sorrow to their parents. Day after day, pebble upon pebble, the children repent and pray in purgatory, begging for salvation by building small stone towers, hoping to climb out of limbo into paradise. 

A place where they are punished for causing great sorrow to their parents.

But no purgatory comes without a challenge. The evil demons are summoned to wreck and scatter the stones, to terrorise the children, forcing them to start over and over again, in an endless cycle. 

The Jizo, the guard and the protector, consoles the young souls and hides them in the wide sleeves of his robe. Today, as the local women dress the Jizo in auspicious protective red colours and warm knits and bibs, they pray that the Jizo can thus clothe the children in his protection.