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A friend has asked about Sai no Kawara, the limbo for children in the
underworld.
Here are some explanations.
This is a rather long story, so take your time.


Buddhist mythology

According to legend attributed to the Jodo Sect around the 14th or
15th century, children who die prematurely are sent to the underworld
as punishment for causing great sorrow to their parents. They are
sent to Sai no Kawara, the river of souls in purgatory, where they
pray for Buddha's compassion by building small stone towers, piling
stone upon stone. But underworld demons, answering to the command of
the old hag Shozuka no Baba, soon arrive and scatter their stones and
beat them with iron clubs. But, no need to worry, for Jizo comes to
the rescue to protect the children. In one version of the story, Jizo
hides the children in the sleeves of his robe.
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/jizo1.shtml


In Shinto mythology
the story goes that between life and death there flows a river. This
river is called Sai no Kawara (translated it means Sai [Childrens
Limbo; Limbo means a region on the border of hell or heaven, serving
as the abode after death of unbaptized infants.] Kawara [riverside].
According to Shinto belief, children do not go to heaven or hell, but
the souls of the dead babies play on the banks of this river, Sai no
Kawara. And one of the things they have to do as their Duty
(penance) there, is to stack up pebbles, and build little towers.
However, while doing so, a naughty, horrible devil usually appears
who disturbs their playing, breaks their towers up, and scares them.
And, it is here where the long sleeves of Jizos robe comes in handy.
Because Jizo is the god who protects children, and he does not fail
to protect them there on the banks of the Sai no Kawara. So when
scared by this devil, they all jump into the sleeve of Jizos robe,
where they hide and feel safe and warm. It is said that in the old
days, some of the Jizo statues were covered in pebbles from people
who stacked the pebbles in front of the Jizo, because it is believed,
that for every tower of pebbles you build on earth, you help the
souls of the dead children to perform their duty there on the Sai no
Kawara.
http://www.aosara.com/articles/jizo.htm


There are many areas all over Japan with this name, where the
grieving parents can go to try and pacify the sould of the lost child
as well as their own. Let me tell you about some of the more famous
ones, most of them I visited myself.

The Sai no Kawara at Mt. Osorezan
in Northern Japan is maybe the most famous of all these places
throughout Japan.

Osorezan, Mountain of the dead
Quote
Mt. Osore, located in Mutsu and two neighboring towns in Aomori
Prefecture, is regarded as a sacred mountain. The smell of sulfur
hangs in the air, and it is dotted with small cairns of stones
erected by pilgrims at places called <>Sai no Kawara<> , Buddhist
rivers believed to be home to the souls of deceased children. Atop
the piles of stones, pinwheels, left by parents praying for the
transmigration of their departed children's souls, chatter in the
wind. It has long been believed in the Shimokita region of the
prefecture, that the souls of the dead congregate on Mt. Osore, or
Osorezan. Every year, during the grand festival of Osorezan Taisai,
held July 22-24, people climb the mountain to "talk" with the souls
of the dead through itako, female shamans who act as mediums.
< picture >
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/visions/img/vj037.jpg


The female Itako Shamans of Osorezan
are a phenomen in themselves, I will take that up elsewhere. I have
even had one of these shamans call up my dead father from Germany and
get his advise, all in almost non-understandable dialect of Tsugaru.
They play an important role in connecting the dead with their
grieving relatives.

Here are some more pictures from Osorezan
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/osorezan.html

This link takes a while, but it has impressive photos and some
English about Osorezan.
http://degulab.cs.dis.titech.ac.jp/museum/osorezan.html

Pictures from the great Shaman Festival at Osorezan
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SilkRoad-Oasis/9236/ghost/tr0207.html

English page
http://jpatokal.iki.fi/photo/travel/Japan/Tohoku/Osorezan/


Hotoke-ga-ura
This is the most western part of the Osorezan Buddhist world, from
here the souls take off directly to the Paradise in the West. The
rough mountains look like Buddhastatues and a huge area is reserved
for the dead children.
http://www6.ocn.ne.jp/~abowind/photo/photogallery1/001_640.jpg
http://www.net.pref.aomori.jp/sai/image62.jpg
http://sozainomori.posca.jp/card_img/3847/9064.jpg
Sunset
http://www.yadokame.net/n047.html

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Here is a great list of all these Sai no Kawara areas throughout
Japan.
It says that this word is not mentioned in the Buddhist scriptures,
but has been in the folk belief of Japan long before the advent of
Buddhism.
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/index2.html

Let me introduce some of this list:

Island Okushiri in Hokkaido
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/okusiri.html

Shakotan Peninsula in Hokkaido
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/syakotan.html

Mount Esan in Hokkaido
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/esan.html
http://www.hiyama.or.jp/soul/sai-2/default.htm

Imaizumi in Aomori
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/imaizumi.html

Moriyama in Aomori
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/moriyama.html

Kesamaruyama in Gunma Prefectuer
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/kesamaruyama.html

Kusatsu Hot Spring in Gunma
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/kusatu.html


Island of Sado, Niigata Prefecture
This one is on the beach of the sea, one of the typical locations of
it.
<picture>
http://hirano.us/toru/images/sai/sado2.jpg
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/sado.html
More pictures, take your time.
http://www41.tok2.com/home/kanihei5/sadosainokawara.html
<> Jizo the protector of the children
http://www41.tok2.com/home/kanihei5/sadosainokawara14.jpeg


Temple Koozen-ji in Nagano Prefecture
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/kozenji.html

Tatami-ga-ura, Iwami, Shimane Prefecture
http://www.sanjo.co.jp/yamane/tatami.html
http://kyushu.yomiuri.co.jp/pre-spe/sfuruten/sfu9905/fu990520.htm

Mt. Daisen, The Big Mountain, in Tottori Prefecture
http://www.page.sannet.ne.jp/katsu-imamura/daisenaki030.html
http://www.page.sannet.ne.jp/katsu-imamura/daisenaki029.jpg
http://www.town.daisen.tottori.jp/photolib/P00592.jpg
http://www.town.daisen.tottori.jp/photolib/P00594.jpg

More pictures about this most holy mountain of Western Japan.
http://www.page.sannet.ne.jp/katsu-imamura/daisen2.html


Mt. Iwaki san in Aomori
There is a special festival for the dead children during August
23/24, Iwaki Sai no Kawara Daisai.
<pictures>
http://www.mutusinpou.co.jp/pic/04082408_s.jpg
http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~isk/ivent/saino_taisai1.jpg

I have been there myself, half way up the mountain beside the small
shrine are mountains of tennis shoes, sweets, windwheels and piled-up
pebbles. Old people would not hesitate to take the steep climb from
the cable car to the top of the mountain to pray for the eternal rest
of the souls. It is a very moving sight to see all these people climb
through mist and strong wind towart the top of stony Mt. Iwaki.
It is one of the many ¡Èmysterious festivals¡É in Aomori.
http://www.mutusinpou.co.jp/news/04082408.html
http://www.thr.mlit.go.jp/aomori/mitimiti/mitimiti8/8-6.html

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Now back to Northern Japan, where most of the Sai no Kawara are
located.
Here is another famous one, which I had a chance to visit many years
ago.

Kawakura in Aomori Prefecture
Within the temple compounds are many items for the dead, like warm
coats for winter and tennis shoes. Someone even offered a bicycle for
the dead child.

As you can see on the picture
http://hirano.us/toru/images/sai/kawakura1.jpg
it looks like the shop of an old cloths and dolls dealer. These are
all offerings.
http://hirano.us/toru/sai/kawakura.html
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/sp/a/n1.html
< pictures >
http://www.h3.dion.ne.jp/~nanchan/tugaru3.jpg
http://www.h3.dion.ne.jp/~nanchan/tugaru2.jpg
http://www.kanagi.jp/kanko/k_data/img/jizouson03.jpg

At this temple, I saw these kind of dolls, have a look.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/sp/a/ni1/ng8.jpg
http://www.sukima.com/12_touhoku00_01/05keikou_05.jpg


<> They are Wedding Dolls for the Dead. <>

Let me tell you an amazing story.
At Kawakura and at some other temples in Northern Japan, mostly in
Tsugaru, I found these dolls, sold for about 100 Dollars or more,
sometimes only one bride or one groom. Asking the priest about these
rows of doll showcases in a special hall, he told me it was mostly
for young people who died during an accident or an illness.

When the dead children would come of age around 20, their grieving
parents, mostly after consulting with an itako Shaman, would by such
a doll for their dead child to be married in the neather world. The
shaman would then tell the parents at the next session that their
child is now happy there and this will relief the grief of the
parents.

I have also seen these wedding doll cases with a little baby added
(when the couple in the netherworld announced this happy event
through the help of the shaman a year after the virtual wedding !)

You can read this story (if you read German) here:
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/bernhard.scheid/rel_vo/ikon/jizo.htm


On the bottom of the following page, you can see some of the
corridors filled whith Wedding dolls.
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/sp/a/n1.html
http://www.sukima.com/12_touhoku00_01/05keikou.htm

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Writing about Sai no Kawara so far brings to memory another story
about the red bibs of Jizo statues which I heared from a priest in
Kamakura, but for an introductuion read this first:

Kokeshi and Infanticide in Japan

First read this story about ¡Èweeding out unwanted children¡É:

"Few Japanese people have any notion of where kokeshi came from or
what they might originally have been used for, nor have they given
the matter much thought. Partly this is because, like nebuta, th word
kokeshi is usually written not with ideograms but in the purely
phonetic syllabary called hiragana, so it is difficult to deduce an
ethymology. Ko, for instance, might mean "small" and keshi might
mean "poppy", in which case the curators of Japan's doll museums
would all be bouncing with joy. But it strikes me as more likely that
the word is an amalgam of a different ko, meaning "child", and kesu,
meaning "get rid of", and that these cute, tender-faced little dolls,
made from simple pieces of wood, a sphere for the head and a cylinder
for the body, may in origin have been fetish substitutes for children
murdered at birth.

Infanticide was not an uncommon practice in rural Japan during the
feudal period and it survived here and there into quite recent times.
The American historian Thomas C. Smith suggest that, in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries at least, it was practised
in Japan "less as a desperate act in the face of poverty than as a
form of family planning." In the towns, abortion was the commonest
form of family planning (and, as the Japanese government persists to
this day in refusing to permit the sale of oral contraceptives, it
remains widely and lucratively practised). But in rural areas, though
officially prohibited by most clan governments, infanticide was the
preferred choice. Moral questions aside, the killing of newborn
babies rather than fetuses has the practical advantage of allowing a
family-or a village- to exert a precise control over the ratio of the
sexes, and it appears that, unlike in China and some parts of Asia,
the horror was not directed wholly, or even mainly, against female
babies, but was used coolly and even-handedly to construct a gender
balance that would ensure the continuance and stability of the group.

According to Mrs. Suzuki Fumi, born in 1898 in Ibaragi prefecture,
not far north of Tokyo, and recorded on tape by the local doctor for
a book of reminiscences called Memories of Silk and
Straw, " 'thinning out' babies was pretty common" even at the time of
her own birth. "It was considered bad luck to have twins", she
explains, "so you got rid of one before your neighbours found out.
Deformed babies were also bumped off. And if you wanted a boy but the
baby was a girl, you'd make it 'a day visitor.' " The murder was
often entrusted to the midwife. "Killing off a newborn baby was a
simple enough business", Mrs. Suzuki remembers. "You just moistened a
piece of paper with spittle and put it over the baby's nose and
mouth; in no time at all it would stop breathing." But there were
alternative methods, and another of Dr. Saga's informants, Mrs.
Terakako Tai, born in 1899, describes two of them. One was "to press
on their chest with your knee."

Another was called usugoro (mortar killing), in which the murderer
was usually the mother herself: "The woman went alone into one of the
buildings outside and had the baby lying on a straw mat. She wrapped
the thing in two straw sacks lids, tied it up with rope and laid it
on the mat. She then rolled a heavy wooden mortar over it. When the
baby was dead, she took it outside and buried it herself. And the
nest day she was expected to be up at the crack of dawn as usual,
doing the housework and helping in the fields...."


Note that Kokeshi dolls have no arms or legs. So Booth continues :

"The absence of limbs might be disquieting, I suppose, if you had
made the possible connection between kokeshi and child murder and had
read Mrs. Suzuki's account of a midwife's attempt to quicken death by
wrapping an infant tightly in rags so that its arms were bounds
invisibly to its sides, or if you knew that one of the traditional
attributes of Japanese ghosts is that they have no feet."
http://www.jref.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1365.html


Young babies just after birth have not had time yet to commit any
crime, apart from the crime of bringing sorrow to their parents. So
they have to hang out in limbo for a while.
For how long, you might ask? For as long as the mother is weeping in
sorrow for them.

In the Edo period and certainly in earlier times too, every hand in
the poor farmers home was needed for work and a mother just could not
afford to be struck with grief long after the birth (and possible
death or killing) of her baby. So after seven days she would get a
kokeshi as memento for the baby, put a red bib on the statue of a
Jizo in her neighbourhood temple and try to forget it all. The red
bib would still carry the smell of the dead child and Jizo could use
this smell to identify the baby when he made his way to the local Sai
no Kawara to help the child out of limbo and into the Paradise of the
West. That is why Jizo statues are sometimes covered up with red bibs
of lost children.

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Just by chance a store to buy kokeshi online.
http://www.japanese-doll.biz/item/kokeshi-doll_23.html

You might have guessed, they also sell DARUMA DOLLS.
http://www.japanese-doll.biz/item/auspicious-doll_19.html

And for a change, they also sell Jizoo Dolls.
This handmade pottery Jizoo is quite popular in Japan.
http://www.japanese-doll.biz/db_img/1090566259up.jpg
http://www.japanese-doll.biz/item/auspicious-doll_18.html

Well, that is a long story and all is not yet told.

Greetings from Mysterious Japan
Gabi san