The River of Remembering
A redreaming of the lost children’s tale
When I recently read this old Japanese legend The Legend of the Humming of the Sai-no-Kawara where the souls of children who died prematurely are believed to dwell. These are the spirits of miscarried, stillborn, aborted, or very young children.
I shook my head. That story is cruel.
Let me tell you the story how I think it should be.
My wife and I lost a child this way. She died in the womb. I was shocked, my wife was devastated, our daughter, her would-be sister confused. We were preparing to move from Central Mexico back up to the USA so she would be born an American citizen. We had already prepared for the arrival that never came. We had named her Anna. There seemed no cause for it yet there it was - no heart beat.
I remembered the story of Kisa Gotami. The grief of a parent is emotionally deep, suffocating and claustrophobic.
Below my new story is the original and my research on the subject which is very interesting. I had posted an article a couple of days ago The Future Needs a New Story… and by the way, we should take a critical look at the past, and consider a reshaping of some of our cultural stories as well. Even a plant with deep and ancient roots must still be pruned and shaped.
The River of Remembering
A redreaming of the lost children’s tale by Cecil Touchon with Chatwick & Co, my editorial and research team.
It is said that somewhere beyond the edge of waking, where dreams begin to wash into the next world, there runs a quiet river made of starlight and tears. The old ones call it the River of Remembering.
This is where the children go - not as punishment, but as welcome. Not because they have done wrong, but because they are still held close by love too large to let them vanish. These are the water children who turned back early: the unborn, the stillborn, the little ones who drifted away too soon. They arrive at the riverbank not in shame but in astonishment, for they are met by those who waited for them.
Here, no demons walk. No cruel towers must be built. The stones along the river are soft and warm from the sun that never sets, and the children spend their time stacking them not as penance, but as play. Each stone holds a memory - first kicks, whispered names, the quiet anticipation of a room that was prepared but never needed. They build cairns of remembrance so that love will not be lost across the waters.
Watching over them is a gentle one with many names. In this retelling, we may still call him Jizō, but he is also called The Guardian of Tender Departures. He does not wear the red bib of mourning but a cloak of woven lullabies, stitched from all the songs that parents never got to sing. He carries no staff of authority, only a lantern lit by the breath of those who once hoped and now grieve.
He does not hide the children in his sleeves. He walks with them hand in hand. He teaches them how to float on moonlight and how to listen for the names still spoken on Earth. And when the time is right - when enough love has been remembered and the grief has been honored - he gathers them gently and helps them cross the river.
On the far side is not a heaven of reward, but a garden of beginnings. Some children choose to stay. Others choose to return in another time, another form, when the world is ready for them. None are forgotten. None are blamed. Their presence ripples backward through the hearts of their kin, as a hidden blessing, a quiet courage, a sudden moment of beauty for no reason at all.
And so, when parents grieve, when stones are laid on graves, or prayers whispered to the stars, they are not trying to release their children from torment. They are sending love across the River of Remembering - where every child is safe, every sorrow is held, and every story will someday be told whole.
One quiet dusk beside the River of Remembering, the children gathered around Jizō as fireflies rose from the moss and twilight brushed the sky with violet ash.
“Guardian,” one of the older children asked, her voice clear as wind chimes, “our parents are still crying. We hear them sometimes, when the world grows still. We feel their ache. We want them to know... we are not lost.”
Another child, holding a garland of dreamflowers, added, “Please, will you send someone to tell them? Let them know we are safe here. That we are playing and laughing and making pictures in the clouds. We are not cold. We are not alone. We are not sad.”
Jizō knelt down among them, and his lantern glowed a little brighter. He nodded solemnly.
“I have long waited for you to ask this,” he said gently. “It is a good wish. A healing wish. And because it comes from love, it can reach across even the deepest waters.”
He told the children to close their eyes and place their hands over their hearts. “Now think of your parents. Call their names in your thoughts. Not with words, but with warmth. Not with pain, but with peace.”
And they did. One by one, each child summoned their memory of love - not of parting, but of belonging. Of the first heartbeat felt, the first soft murmur of a name, the imagined future that still shines in the blood of their families.
Jizō then gathered these wishes like seeds. He whispered them into the breeze that carries scents only the soul can smell, and sent them into the waking world.
That night, many parents across the Earth slept more peacefully than they had in years. Some dreamed of their children laughing beside a silver river, waving from a bridge of stars. Some woke with tears on their faces, but no longer from sorrow but release. Others felt a stillness they could not explain, like being held from within.
A few found tiny cairns of stones in the woods, or on their doorstep, or by a stream - stacked with care, as if placed by unseen hands just for them.
Jizō said nothing more. The children returned to their games. But from then on, every so often, a parent who has known that particular ache will feel something shift - a sudden hush of calm, a scent like milk and rain, a warmth where none was expected.
And in that moment, whether they believe it or not, they have received the message.
Everything is all right.
We are still with you.
We are safe.
We are happy.
We are love remembering itself.
And nothing—nothing—has been lost.
The Ones Who Remember
In the years that followed, those who received the message often could not explain it. They just changed.
Some began to make things with their hands again - quilts, poems, gardens, songs. Not to distract themselves, but to carry the warmth forward. Others found themselves drawn to the sound of water, the hush of rivers and rain, as if listening for something remembered just beyond language.
Some became caretakers. Healers. Artists. They didn’t set out to become such things. They simply found that their sorrow had softened into a kind of knowing, a quiet patience with the world and its wounds.
A few began to tell the story - though they rarely called it a story. They shared it in paintings with rivers full of stars. In lullabies sung to children not yet born. In stones stacked gently beside hiking trails, each one a silent blessing.
They became the Ones Who Remember.
Not just their own loss, but the wider river we all cross. They began to live with the sense that nothing truly ends, and that what seems like absence is sometimes just a different kind of presence. That love doesn’t vanish - it changes shape.
And because of that, these remembering ones began to act differently in the world. They brought compassion to places where hardness had taken root. They stood beside those who felt forgotten. They noticed the invisible burdens others carried and found ways to lighten them, if only for a while.
In this way, the children’s wish became more than a single message carried on wind. It became a lineage of kindness.
Jizō watched all this, silent and smiling.
Sometimes, walking in a city or forest, he would see someone pause to stack three small stones, one atop another, for no clear reason. A mother might stoop to tie her child’s shoe and leave behind a pebble on the curb without knowing why. A potter might shape a bowl that feels oddly familiar, as though made to catch tears that will never fall.
These gestures, however small, are all echoes of the wish once made on the banks of the River of Remembering.
So it is told:
The lost are not lost.
The message was sent.
And some, without knowing how, are living proof that love carries on.
Even now, you may be one of them.
One of the remembering ones.
One of the quiet carriers of peace.
And if you are, then you already know:
The children are safe.
The river flows gently.
Everything is as it should be.
The Back Story of the Legend
Jizo Wasan (和 讃 = Wasan = Hymn or Psalm)
The Legend of the Humming of the Sai-no-Kawara
from “Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan” by Lafcadio Hearn
First published in 1894. ISBN: 0781230713
“Now there is a wasan of Jizo,” says Akira, taking from a shelf in the temple alcove some much-worn, blue-covered Japanese book. ”A wasan is what you would call a hymn or psalm. This book is two hundred years old. It is called Sai-no-Kawara-kuchi-zu-sami-no-den, which is, literally, The Legend of the Humming of the Sai-no-Kawara. And this is the wasan.” And he reads me the hymn of Jizo -- the legend of the murmur of the little ghosts, the legend of the humming of the Sai-no-Kawara, rhythmically, like a song:
Not of this world is the story of sorrow.
The story of the Sai-no-Kawara,
At the roots of the Mountain of Shide;
Not of this world is the tale; yet 'tis most pitiful to hear.
For together in the Sai-no-Kawara are assembled
Children of tender age in multitude,
Infants but two or three years old,
Infants of four or five, infants of less than ten:
In the Sai-no-Kawara are they gathered together.
And the voice of their longing for their parents,
The voice of their crying for their mothers and their fathers
-- “Chichi koishi! Haha koishi!" --
Is never as the voice of the crying of children in this world,
But a crying so pitiful to hear
That the sound of it would pierce through flesh and bone.
And sorrowful indeed the task which they perform.
Gathering the stones of the bed of the river,
Therewith to heap the tower of prayers.
Saying prayers for the happiness of father, they heap the first tower;
Saying prayers for the happiness of mother, they heap the second tower;
Saying prayers for their brothers, their sisters, and all whom they
loved at home, they heap the third tower.
Such, by day, are their pitiful diversions.
But ever as the sun begins to sink below the horizon,
Then do the Oni, the demons of the hells, appear,
And say to them:
What is this that you do here?
Lo! your parents still living in the Shaba-world
Take no thought of pious offering or holy work
They do nought but mourn for you from the morning unto the evening.
Oh, how pitiful! alas! how unmerciful!
Verily the cause of the pains that you suffer
Is only the mourning, the lamentation of your parents.
And saying also, "Blame never us!"
The demons cast down the heaped-up towers,
They dash the stones down with their clubs of iron.
But lo! the teacher Jizo appears.
All gently he comes, and says to the weeping infants:
Be not afraid, dears! be never fearful!
Poor little souls, your lives were brief indeed!
Too soon you were forced to make the weary journey to the Meido,
The long journey to the region of the dead!
Trust to me! I am your father and mother in the Meido,
Father of all children in the region of the dead.
And he folds the skirt of his shining robe about them;
So graciously takes he pity on the infants.
To those who cannot walk he stretches forth his strong shakujo;
And he pets the little ones, caresses them, takes them to his loving bosom
So graciously he takes pity on the infants.
Namu Amida Butsu!
end quote Lafcadio Hearn
also see Beauregard Parish Library E-text Initiative
西院河原地藏和讚」成立攷
Sainokawara Jizo Wasan
Vernacular Hymns Dedicated to Jizo
at the Sai River Beach and Their Possible Age of Compilation
by Manabe Kouzai 真鍋廣濟, ISBN/ISSN: 0287-6000
The Legend of Sai no Kawara (賽の河原)
“The Riverbed of Souls”
In Japanese Buddhist cosmology, there exists a bleak place between this world and the next called Sai no Kawara, the "riverbed of the Sai (or Sanzu) River," where the souls of children who died prematurely are believed to dwell.
These are the spirits of miscarried, stillborn, aborted, or very young children, who died before accumulating enough karma to move on through the Buddhist cycle of rebirth. Because they died before being able to perform acts of filial piety, and because their deaths caused suffering to their parents, it was once thought that they were burdened with a karmic debt.
At the banks of this desolate river, the children are compelled to stack stones into towers, trying to build stupas (Buddhist memorials) to pray for their parents and earn merit for their own passage to the afterlife. But each night, demons (oni) appear and cruelly knock down the towers, tormenting the children, who are forced to begin again the next day. It is a cruel and endless task - a karmic version of the Sisyphean myth.
Jizō Bosatsu (地蔵菩薩)
The Merciful Bodhisattva
Into this sorrowful myth steps Jizō Bosatsu (Kṣitigarbha in Sanskrit), one of the most beloved figures in Japanese Buddhism. Jizō is a bodhisattva, a being who vows to forgo enlightenment in order to aid all sentient beings.
Jizō is said to walk the banks of the Sanzu River in compassionate defiance of this cruel fate. Instead of letting the children suffer, he hides them in the sleeves of his robe, shelters them from the demons, and carries them safely across the river to a peaceful realm.
Because of this legend, Jizō has become the protector of deceased children, especially mizuko (水子, “water children”) a term for children lost to miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth. Parents often erect Jizō statues at temples or roadside shrines, dressing them in red bibs or caps, offering small stones, toys, or flowers as a gesture of care and mourning.
Cultural Practices
Mizuko kuyō (水子供養) is a Buddhist memorial service developed especially for mourning unborn or lost children. These ceremonies often include offerings to Jizō and prayers for the peace of the child’s soul.
Many temples, such as Zojo-ji in Tokyo or Okuno-in on Mount Kōya, have rows of small Jizō statues dressed and cared for by grieving families.
The act of stacking stones remains a ritual act of remembrance and penance, echoing the original legend.
Interpretation and Evolving Views
While this myth gave structure to grief and ritual, it also reflects older views of karmic punishment that some now critique as harsh especially the idea that children might suffer for dying early. Over time, especially in modern and contemporary contexts, Jizō has come to symbolize unconditional compassion and refuge, even as the older imagery of punishment lingers in cultural memory.
The following timeline combines literary, religious, and cultural developments, showing how the story moved from grim cosmology to tender ritual.
📜 Nara Period (710–794)
Introduction of Kṣitigarbha (Jizō) into Japanese Buddhism
Kṣitigarbha (地蔵菩薩, Jizō Bosatsu in Japanese) is introduced from China and India, where he is already revered as a bodhisattva who helps beings in hell realms.
In early Japanese Buddhism, he is primarily associated with rescuing souls from torment after death.
His name means “Earth Womb,” suggesting rootedness, nurturing, and the ability to hold beings safely.
📖 Heian Period (794–1185)
Early references to Jizō in Buddhist texts and art
Jizō appears in sutra commentaries and etoki (narrative picture scrolls) as a compassionate helper for suffering souls.
While not yet tied specifically to children, his role as a savior in the six realms (especially hell) is emphasized.
The groundwork for later child-centered legends is laid during this period, as Buddhism fuses with indigenous Japanese spiritual beliefs (Shinbutsu-shūgō).
🌫 Kamakura Period (1185–1333)
Rise of Pure Land and popular Buddhism
In a time of political chaos and widespread suffering, more accessible, emotionally resonant forms of Buddhism spread, especially Jōdo (Pure Land) and Nichiren.
The concept of karmic burden at birth and death becomes more widespread, and laypeople seek ritual help to ease suffering.
The earliest versions of the Sai no Kawara tale begin to circulate orally, likely inspired by sermons and folk storytelling.
Jizō’s association with guiding souls through death becomes stronger, especially for those who died tragically or prematurely.
🪨 Muromachi Period (1336–1573)
The Sai no Kawara myth takes literary shape
The legend of the children at the rocky river appears in setsuwa (Buddhist parables) and popular storytelling texts like the Otogizōshi.
One tale describes children endlessly stacking stones to atone for causing sorrow to their parents by dying young.
The demons (oni) who knock down the towers nightly are introduced - highlighting the futility and suffering of the children.
Jizō appears as the compassionate savior, shielding children in his sleeves and helping them cross the Sanzu River.
🏮 Edo Period (1603–1868)
Mizuko memorialization and popular devotion explode
The legend becomes widely known, and Jizō’s statues appear in homes, temples, and along roadsides across Japan.
Pilgrimage sites and Sai no Kawara-themed rituals become widespread.
Red bibs and caps are used to clothe Jizō statues, symbolizing parental love and protection for lost children.
This period sees the rise of popular Buddhism - especially through the actions of women and lay practitioners, who ritualize personal grief through offerings to Jizō.
💔 Modern Period (Meiji Era onward, 1868–present)
Mizuko kuyō rituals and reinterpretation
In the post-war era, especially from the 1970s onward, mizuko kuyō (水子供養) rituals become common in response to miscarriage, abortion, and stillbirth.
Jizō’s image becomes softened, emphasizing comfort and care rather than karmic punishment.
Some critics (especially feminists and progressive Buddhists) challenge the guilt-based framing of child loss as karmic debt.
Psychologically sensitive interpretations arise, framing the ritual as a way for parents - especially mothers - to grieve, release sorrow, and connect spiritually.
Literary, artistic, and cinematic depictions (e.g., in manga, films, poetry) continue to keep the Sai no Kawara story alive, though often with more nuance and tenderness.
🪷 Contemporary Cultural Resonance (2000s–present)
Globalization, reinterpretation, and alternative tellings
The legend spreads beyond Japan, especially through travel writing, spiritual texts, and art installations.
Writers and artists (such as in the Atlas Obscura piece) offer retellings that emphasize the emotional and spiritual dimensions over strict doctrinal readings.
Modern retellings like - my redreamed version above - reframe the tale not as punishment, but as a myth of remembrance, compassion, and continuing relationship between the living and the departed.
Jizō shrines continue to grow in number, especially in cemeteries and gardens devoted to peace and healing.
Really appreciated and connected with this. I too lost my first son, stillborn, and he was my impetus for becoming an artist. 🙏😘✌️
I really don't have much to contribute as I never had children. The only thing I can affirm is that whenever we lost one of our pets, I always have gotten signs that they are fine. Usually the signs would appear depending on how devastated I was. They can appear in many different ways, but the signs always consoled me (we lost one 4 weeks ago). You just have to believe they will be provided and look for them.
I like your redreaming better. :-)