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Updated: June 11, 2025
He owes his elevation to the fact that Vajra, originally meaning simply thunderbolt, came to be used as a mystical expression for the highest truth. More important than these is Kshitigarbha, Ti-tsang or Jizō who in China and Japan ranks second only to Kuan-yin.
"Kwannon," the goddess of mercy; "Jizo," the guardian of travelers and children; "Emma O," "King of Hell," who punishes sinners; "Fudo Sama," "The Immovable One," are all personifications of the various attributes of deity and are worshiped as separate gods, each being represented by a uniform type of idol.
And mothers suffering from want of milk come hither to pray that milk may be given unto them; and their prayer is heard. And mothers having more milk than their infants need come hither also, and pray to Jizo that so much as they can give may be taken for the dead children; and their prayer is heard, and their milk diminishes. At least thus the peasants of Izumo say.
Roku Jizo 'The Six Jizo' these images are called in the speech of the people; and such groups may be seen in many a Japanese cemetery. They are representations of the most beautiful and tender figure in Japanese popular faith, that charming divinity who cares for the souls of little children, and consoles them in the place of unrest, and saves them from the demons.
Only at night do the shadowy children come to build their little stone- heaps at the feet of Jizo; and it is said that every night the stones are changed. When I ask why they do not work by day, when there is none to see them, I am answered: 'O-Hi-San might see them; the dead exceedingly fear the Lady-Sun. To the question, 'Why do they come from the sea? I can get no satisfactory answer.
Then the grandmother told them of Jizo, the patron saint of travellers and children, the helper of all who are in trouble. Everywhere by the roadside in Japan is found the figure of Jizo.
From the wayside, the same statues of Jizo smiled upon the same pilgrim figures passing to the same temples; and then, as now, of summer days, one might see naked brown children laughing in all the shallow rivers, and all the rivers laughing to the sun.
Akira also tells me this: It is related in the seventh volume of the book Kamakurashi that there was formerly at Kamakura a temple called Emmei-ji, in which there was enshrined a famous statue of Jizo, called Hadaka-Jizo, or Naked Jizo. The statue was indeed naked, but clothes were put upon it; and it stood upright with its feet upon a chessboard.
But Jizo also is a little changed; even in his sextuple representation, the Roku-Jizo, he appears not standing, but seated upon his lotus-flower, and I see no stones piled up before him, as in the eastern provinces.
At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricate wood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a great statue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and at intervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat: Buddha, in many incarnations; Kwannon, goddess of mercy; Jizo Bosatzu Hotei, pot-bellied, god of contentment; Jingo-Kano, god of war.
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