Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan: Volume 7

By Helen Hardacre

Book Overview

Helen Hardacre provides new insights into the spiritual and cultural dimensions of abortion debates around the world in this careful examination of mizuko kuyo-a Japanese religious ritual for aborted fetuses. Popularized during the 1970s, when religious entrepreneurs published frightening accounts of fetal wrath and spirit attacks, mizuko kuyo offers ritual atonement for women who, sometimes decades previously, chose to have abortions. As she explores the complex issues that surround this practice, Hardacre takes into account the history of Japanese attitudes toward abortion, the development of abortion rituals, the marketing of religion, and the nature of power relations in intercourse, contraception, and abortion.

Although abortion in Japan is accepted and legal and was commonly used as birth control in the early postwar period, entrepreneurs used images from fetal photography to mount a surprisingly successful tabloid campaign to promote mizuko kuyo. Enthusiastically adopted by some religionists as an economic strategy, it was soundly rejected by others on doctrinal, humanistic, and feminist grounds.

In four field studies in different parts of the country, Helen Hardacre observed contemporary examples of mizuko kuyo as it is practiced in Buddhism, Shinto, and the new religions. She also analyzed historical texts and contemporary personal accounts of abortion by women and their male partners and conducted interviews with practitioners to explore how a commercialized ritual form like mizuko kuyo can be marketed through popular culture and manipulated by the same forces at work in the selling of any commodity. Her conclusions reflect upon the deep current of misogyny and sexism running through these rites and through feto-centric discourse in general.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520216547
• ISBN13: 9780520216549
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Highly Recommended!

Anyone interested in family planning in Japan should read this book! Not only does it do a fantastic job of explaining the Japanese mindset regarding abortion (since abortion rates in Japan are extremely high from an American point of view), but it is also an in-depth look at the new anti-abortion movement in Japan which has become a multi-million dollar industry in Japan that survives by creating and then feeding off of post-abortion guilt. This is a great academic read, but it is also interesting from a cultural perspective.