Perhaps you've heard of Jizo Bosatsu, the Buddhist deity who looks after travelers, children and the underworld. No, not that underworld, the other one — the one you go to after you die.
Stone Jizo statues are often seen at crossroads, ostensibly to protect pedestrians and other traffic. The effigies are usually looked after by neighborhood elders who make red bibs and sometimes hats for them to wear. But I wonder why you hardly ever see Jizo statues at bus terminals or train stations? And never have I seen one at an airport. Perhaps Jizo, who originally protected the ambulatory, is just an old-fashioned kind of guy — even a modern Luddite. Or maybe he's just too busy to make it to the airport.
I decided to get to know this deity a little better by going on a 24-site Jizo pilgrimage in Kamakura that longtime Kamakura resident and Buddhist statue aficionado Mark Schumacher had tipped me off to. In this way, I could meet 24 manifestations of this deity, whose name is often translated as "Womb of the Earth."