At temples all over Japan, there are stone statues wearing aprons and caps of red cloth. Someone once told me that the cloth was supposed to keep the statues warm at night and protect them when it rained. What my friend neglected to say was that many of these statues are dedicated to mizuko, literally "water child," an aborted or miscarried fetus.

The ritual of remembrance and apology made to a miscarried or aborted fetus is performed in a mizuko kuyo, a rite without a precise parallel in the West.

Those wanting to know why Western society is more reticent about its own water children can read "Motherhood Lost," by Linda Layne (published by Routledge, 2003). Layne is an anthropology professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. She suffered the first of seven miscarriages in 1986.