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The Japanese Art of Grieving a Miscarriage
- jf 10y agoAmericans would do well to adopt more mourning traditions. I recommend everybody read "On Death and Dying" which I found to be very insightful and quite helpful. (edited to fix spelling)
- drdeadringer 10y agoThere are several areas where America could do well to in adopting a clear tradition, mourning being just one.
- serge2k 10y ago> more morning traditions I have enough shit to do in the morning, and I'm not waking up earlier. But really, why? Why can't America just do things the American way? Why do people reject the idea that Americans are allowed to have their own culture?
- jessriedel 10y agoI agree that the knee-jerk reflex to presume superiority of international (and especially European) cultural aspects is tiresome. And very rarely do people actually manage a dispassionate comparison of two cultures, with a preference that could not be deduced from their prior political leanings. But in this case, jf isn't just emoting about his opinion, he's at least suggesting some place for further reading. His comment is useful for someone who might want to know more about how other cultures mourn.
- lotyrin 10y agoI often run into people simultaneously rejecting that we have our own culture and forbidding that we dare adopt any other culture. It's all been appropriated, and of course one can't be doing that. I'm glad I have no need to please these people, as I'm not sure how to do so.
- Spellman 10y agoI don't think the GP is suggesting we simply co-opt other customs. But that we can either develop our own or adapt others'. The lack of any tradition has been a deafening issue for child deaths. There are small efforts, such as rainbow babies or purple butterflies (Google them) that are helping bring awareness and systems to grieve. But most are to bring awareness or as a marker to indicate non-verbally to others to tread lightly. But nothing has taken root in the same mourning traditions we see in other cultures.
- hkjgkjy 10y agoI suspect GP meant "mourning" but misspelled
- serge2k 10y agoHence, "But really". I don't call out or explain jokes, as a general rule. Not sure why people downvote. Too stupid to understand a joke? Too uptight? just generally assholes?
- zedadex 10y ago> Not sure why people downvote https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- pyre 10y ago> Why do people reject the idea that Americans are allowed to have their own culture? reply No one said that they are not allowed to have their own culture. Read the post you are replying to again. It is implying that American are lacking in mourning traditions and that some should be adopted. Looking at what other cultures do is a start, but there's nothing to say that these new mourning traditions couldn't be entirely new, and specific to Americans.
- serge2k 10y ago> No one said that they are not allowed to have their own culture No, people just constantly assert that other cultures are better and that Americans should adopt their values instead.
- pyre 10y agoYou're tilting at windmills here. The original post did not say this, yet this is what you are continuing to rant about.
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- treehau5 10y agoI find the Orthodox tradition for miscarriages and stillbirths to be particularly beautiful.
- protomyth 10y agoAmerica has quite a lot of different mourning traditions. I assure you that the last overnight wake, funeral then year after gathering was quite enough for me.
- jf 10y agoI'm not sure if those are the right way for us to grieve? Personally, I found the Jewish mourning ritual of Shiva to be more fulfilling than funerals. We might need to change the way we grieve too? The book "On Death and Dying" points out that advances in science have made it harder to accept death in our modern age, since a "cure" could legitimacy be just around the corner.
- protomyth 10y agoI doubt they will change, deep cultural roots after all. Since the funeral is a small part of the overall, I'd hold off on the judgement based on my description. I would also point out that advances in science are unevenly distributed and actually don't affect a lot of deaths in certain places.
- gohrt 10y agoJews have funerals (and 1-year anniversary gatherings: unveiling). and Shiva is very similar to a wake
- protomyth 10y agoInteresting, the Dakota do a one year after gathering (and some relatives have some restrictions on their activities during the year). I wonder how common the practice is?
- kazinator 10y agoAs far as that nation is concerned, refraining from voting for a sex offender who mocks disabled people would be a good start.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y agoWhere does this come from? Why do people care how Americans mourn? We mourn plenty, and in every way. Why do you care? Why should Americans care what you think? This is presumptuous and insulting. How dare you prescribe how others celebrate or mourn. If anything, the rest of the world should diversify. That's equally absurd as treating America like a single culture. Disgusting.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y agoNon-Americans would do well to stop talking about America as a single culture. It's even more laughable when an American does it.
- alphonsegaston 10y agoMissing from this article is that while jizo statues are used to commemorate miscarriage, they are far more commonly used to grieve over/religiously absolve oneself of abortion. While I'm happy that the author found some relief in this tradition, it struck me as odd that this was omitted. That miscarriages and abortions were treated with the same ritual always spoke to me as a more sincere expression of the suffering of women, especially given the gender inequity in Japan. The NY Times also themselves wrote about this 20 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/25/world/in-japan-a-ritual-of-mourning-for-abortions.html https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/25/world/in-japan-a-ritual-o...
- m_mueller 10y agoI always found gender inequity in Japan quite different from how it was in the West. To me it seems that Japanese women were comparatively highly respected. Their role in society was different from that of the men, and still is, but independently from that the status of women was high since long ago. Just as an example, Japanese wives have traditionally had full financial control over the family budget - men got an allowance from them. I think wives/mothers in traditional households were usually seen as the head of the family behind the scenes, doing most of the important family decisions.
- wumpus 10y agoIn the southern USA, women are "respected" until they violate social norms of getting married and having children. I hear that women in Japan are still expected to (and usually do) quit their jobs when they have a child. You might try talking to some women in these situations to find out if they consider that to be a situation in which they are "highly respected". You might find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Shinto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Shinto to be interesting reading.
- m_mueller 10y agoNote that I never wrote that the situation is maximising happiness as-is and shouldn't be changed. I just wanted to point out that the peculiarities of the traditional female role in Japan differs quite a bit from Western societies, and one should be careful to leave out assumptions that come from mirroring our home culture. One other example is that in Japan, the arguably most formative work of literature is 'Tale of Genji' (~1000 AD!), written by a woman. This work has a Dante's Inferno like status in Japan, in that it was both formative to both Japanese language and culture. The closest you could compare it to in English is if you combine the impacts of both the King James' bible and Shakespeare's work. This is just to show what I mean with cultural status of women in Japan - it basically started since 1000 years ago when the women's way of writing (Hiragana / vocabulary / grammar) has started to become more and more the standard thanks to Lady Murasaki, and funnily enough this is still an ongoing process with Kanji's still being dropped for Hiragana. I think you'd have a hard time finding a historical Western woman with a comparable cultural impact - Queen Elizabeth I is the only one I can think of.
- kickscondor 10y agoWe do a similar thing with balloons - as I've gone through a miscarriage (with my wife) and a pet dying after twelve years (with the kids too) - and realizing that both were significant deaths for us that had no traditional outlets for our feelings - a funeral felt strange in those cases - we wrote goodbyes on balloons and let them go. But there is something fun in a Jizo statue - that it makes an abstract feeling more concrete.
- Arizhel 10y ago>a funeral felt strange in those cases Huh? Why? Back when I was married, we had a funeral every time one of our pets died. Not some big affair with other people, of course, but just a small little ceremony for ourselves in our home or in the backyard where we buried the box. Writing goodbyes on balloons and letting them go as you did can also be said to be a form of a funeral.
- kickscondor 10y agoTrue. Yeah I don't know - our children were very little and I guess I think of a funeral as kind of byzantine thing for a handful of people to do. We also didn't have a body in either case - maybe an empty box felt strange? I don't know. I am also very into breaking from traditions.
- enimodas 10y agoI've never understood why people grieve after a miscarriage. Similarly, I was surprised to learn that many people find having an abortion to be somewhat traumatic. I've never had children and I hopefully never will. Anybody else feels similar or wants to explain? Is it cultural, all just pregnancy hormones or something else?
- ksenzee 10y agoIt is neither cultural nor hormonal. A miscarriage is the loss of what was going to be a human life, and all the plans, thoughts, and hopes that went along with it. And the later in pregnancy it is, the harder it is to take. Miscarrying at six weeks is different from miscarrying at 11 weeks. I've done both (and I didn't grieve terribly either time, but I felt the loss). I can't imagine how much worse it would be to miscarry at, say, 18 weeks, when you've felt the baby kicking.
- AUTISM_ALERT 10y agoBEEP BEEP BEEP
- jf 10y agoTycho of Penny Arcade describes this well, I think: Children carve something out of you, a place for themselves; people can twist the knife in that spot, and it just bleeds and bleeds. The process of having a child changes the parents in many ways: emotionally, psychologically, physically, etc. The parents carry not only their own expectations, hopes, and dreams, but those of their friends and family.
- xenadu02 10y agoThis is true. I never once teared up during a movie, passage from a book, etc until after my son was born. I can't say what it is like for other people but for me it is almost like gaining a new sense.
- tylerscott 10y agoI ended my years long lurking here to be able to second this comment. The way you articulated this--a new sense--is so spot on.
- nihonde 10y agoMy neighborhood in Japan is surrounded by graveyards, including many, many jizo. At first, I was creeped out by the ever-present reminders of death, but now I feel it is a very healthy society that confronts mortality head-on and makes death part of the visible landscape of daily life.
- markdown 10y agoIn Samoa and American Samoa, family members are usually buried beside their homes. It's not completely uncommon for homes to later be extended, causing the graves to be inside the houses or in the verandah. I visited the home of a distant family member (by marriage) once and their grandparents graves were inside what had become the sitting room/lounge. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i3DWwUsLFBU/Tq3D2VDcwgI/AAAAAAAAAQc/b7gOsDYOfVM/s1600/Grave1.JPG http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-i3DWwUsLFBU/Tq3D2VDcwgI/AAAAAAAAAQ...
- nihonde 10y agoMost homes in Japan also have shrine to ancestors too. I have one at my house. Family friends come by regularly to leave fresh flowers and gifts and spend time remembering their friends. It's a nice tradition.
- ekianjo 10y agoIn the countryside in Japan you often have graves next to one's home, especially in remote areas where you are far from a temple or a village center - that way you can still visit the grave often.
- mc32 10y agoIn the American South one can also find "familial graveyards" [1] Although it's a dying tradition, as I understand it. [1]https://geanderson.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/now-about-that-cemetery-in-the-backyard%E2%80%A6/ https://geanderson.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/now-about-that-c...
- jpatokal 10y agoFWIW, Jizo (地蔵, "Earth Treasury") is the Japanese version of the Buddhist boddhisattva Kshitigarbha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshitigarbha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshitigarbha (A boddhisattva being one who is enlightened, but chooses to hang around the mortal planes to help others instead of flitting off to heaven.) More traditionally, he's considered the patron saint of children (living ones too) and travelers. The "baby Jizo" thing came about when he morphed from being the protector of unborn and recently died children to actually representing the unborn/dead child, and is as far as I know this is an entirely Japanese adaptation. Also, Jizo statues are common memorials for children who died young as well. Every now and then, you run into one with a child's sandals, toys, snacks etc beside it, which is pretty heart-breaking because you know that only a few months ago there was a little toddler running around in those tiny pink flipflops that are now bleaching in the sun and rain. I was once at Hase-dera in Kamakura, which has an exceptionally large collection of baby Jizos. There was an American tour group stomping through and laughing at all these statues decorated with bibs and Hello Kitty figures and even little bottles of sake, because isn't Japan just so wacky and crazy? If they only knew the amount of heartbreak and pain they represent...
- gohrt 10y agoThe headline has a distasteful fetishizing tone, but the article is a respectful appreciation of a valuable cross-cultural lesson.
- yati 10y agoThis is a great story, and I'm glad that a simple tradition helped comfort a fellow human. But while I do understand that most people likely do not take the religious reasons behind rituals too seriously, I find the following wicked: > According to Buddhist belief, a baby who is never born can’t go to heaven, having never had the opportunity to accumulate good karma. I'm no scholar in these matters, but almost every religion has some sort emotional torture built in for parents of miscarried/aborted children :(
- shanusmagnus 10y agoThe Mormons have a clever hack for this - on Fridays they have a group that "baptizes the dead" to make up for it. The true believers around here set great store by it.
- jdmichal 10y agoCatholicism isn't terrible in this regard, either. They actually take a rather agnostic approach, which is refreshing to see. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_d... Basic summary is that they rely on God to judge, and instead hope that He finds them worthy.
- erroneousfunk 10y agoThat's a big reason why genealogy is so important for the Mormons. They need to baptize past ancestors so they'll be able to see them in heaven.