Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan
Regular price
€36.50
20th century japan the emergence of a world power
20th century japanese cultural practices
A01=Helen Hardacre
aborted fetuses
abortion
abortion debates
abortion rituals
asian culture
Author_Helen Hardacre
birth control
buddhism
Category=JBCC
Category=JBFV1
Category=JBSF
Category=JHMC
Category=QRAC
Category=QRRL
Category=QRVJ1
contraception
cultural studies
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fetal photography
fetal wrath
feto centric discourse
intercourse
japan
japanese culture
japanese religions
japanese religious ritual
marketing of religion
mizuko kuyo
popular culture
power relations
religious practices
ritual atonement
shinto
spirit attacks
spiritual
Product details
- ISBN 9780520216549
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 Mar 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
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.
Helen Hardacre is Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society at Harvard University, and author of Shinto and the State, 1868-1988 (1989) and Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan (1986).
