For the next two days it rained continuously: sometimes a downpour, sometimes an invisible mist. According to the weather report, a typhoon was blustering up near Hokkaido and affecting the main island.

Today the rain had stopped, but it was still overcast. Sarah and her grandmother were walking home from the open-air market. The air was damp and warm and hushed.

“Let’s cut through So-Zen Temple,” Sarah suggested.

“Good idea,” said her grandmother. “The pines will smell nice.”

The lanes near the temple had hardly changed. Prewar wooden houses still stood behind their rustic fences, the same fences Sarah had admired as a teenager. “Thank god for zoning laws,” the neighbors said. After all, So-Zen Temple was an important historical attraction.

They entered the temple grounds through an unassuming back entrance. So-Zen had multiple entrances because it was such a sprawling complex, one of the largest in the country. They walked down a path so narrow they could feel the clammy moisture of the stone walls on either side. Above them towered a profusion of trees—bamboos, flaming red maples, gnarled pines that housed the largest crows Sarah had seen anywhere. Their guttural cah-cahs broke through the cheeping of smaller birds.

“You know what Mama told me once?” Sarah gestured up at the trees with her free hand. “She said when she was little, some boy climbed all the way up one of these pine trees to get a nest of eggs. And the mother crow swooped in and pecked at his head…”

“Soh soh! And he fell and broke his leg,” supplied Mrs. Kobayashi with relish. “I do remember that.”

It was odd to think of neighborhood children having free rein in what were now official grounds. But when her mother was little, children had pattered up and down the wooden verandas of temple buildings that were now fenced and roped off and labeled like museum exhibits. On this hushed autumn morning, with the grounds empty now that the autumn tourist season had drawn to a close, Sarah sensed for the first time what So-Zen must have been like when Japan was a poor country. The temple buildings seemed to deflate, receding into the foliage and taking second place to the living creatures emboldened at having the grounds to themselves: crows flapping heavily from branch to branch; smaller birds bursting into the air in groups of two or three, their wings sounding like a deck of cards being shuffled.

“This is where Mama used to catch snakes when it rained.” Sarah gestured to a ditch running alongside the lane. It was a ditch from a bygone century: narrow and deep, lined with granite blocks. “She said she once found a white one, but she put it back because, you know, white snakes are supposed to be holy.”

“Really, she caught snakes? She never brought any home…” Mrs. Kobayashi peered down into the mossy ditch. Leaves and rainwater flowed swiftly past. “She was always a thoughtful child,” she said, “thinking ahead to spare me trouble.”

The pathway dead-ended. They could turn left toward the main part of the complex or else go right, down a long cobbled walkway shaded year-round by the overhanging branches of donguri trees. They always took the latter path because it led toward home. The walkway was strewn with small black donguri—indigenous acorns that generations of small children had picked off these cobblestones and brought home for their mothers to roast as snacks.

They passed more temples, their wood weathered to a velvety aged brown that was almost black. They were unadorned and timeless. Their simple lines sank into her soul in a way the cathedrals of Europe never could, reminding her of the eternity that lay beneath temporal emotions.

“I wonder if it’s going to rain,” said Mrs. Kobayashi. The sky seemed grayer now than it had an hour ago. A donguri dropped down onto the walkway behind them. This part of the path was always less crowded, since the temples petered out here and there was nothing to see. Today it was utterly deserted. The only other person they had seen all morning was a shaven priest clopping by in the opposite direction, dignified and austere in his dark robes with tan-colored tassels. Above high wooden geta, his tabi-clad feet gleamed white. But now he was nowhere in sight.

“Grandma, let’s sneak in and see the baby Jizo,” Sarah said impulsively. “I didn’t get a chance last time, it was summer and there were tourists all over the place…”

“Baby Jizo, where? What are you talking about?”

Sarah felt a catch of surprise, for the baby Jizo had been important to her mother. She wondered if she had just made some sort of blunder.

But it was too late now. “Mama used to come here all the time,” she explained. “I’ll show you. See, you go over this fence…” She quickly straddled the low iron tourist railing, looking back and laughing at her grandmother’s shocked expression. “Quick!” she said. “There’s nobody around. Quick!”

Mrs. Kobayashi’s face darkened with disapproval, but curiosity made her follow. Holding down her skirt with one hand, she cautiously straddled the low fence, lifting one wool-stockinged leg after the other. They slipped between the trees, squeezed through an opening in a wall of shrubbery, and there it was: a small clearing with twenty or so crumbling statues of tiny smiling bodhisattvas. They had been rescued after the war from remote country roads up in the Kyoto hills.

Mrs. Kobayashi stood in the clearing and gazed about her with a look of dawning dismay. “You realize, don’t you,” she said finally, “these aren’t ordinary Jizo. They’re markers for real-life babies that died in bad circumstances.”

Sarah knew. In past centuries, illegitimate babies had been drowned. Orphans had starved during famines. There was even an ancient tradition of putting twins to death if they were born of opposite sexes. Some of the stone markers—so old and weathered they looked like lumps of rock—had two figures etched side by side. None of these children had had a proper burial. Since there was no family to chant sutras and push the children safely into the next world, little Jizo were created in their memory. The sadder the circumstances, it was said, the sweeter the smile a stoneworker would carve. The Jizo would stand on roadsides and protect travelers from harm.

“When Mama was sad or upset as a girl, and even when she was in college,” Sarah told her grandmother, “she’d come and sit here. She made up stories about who they were and what their families were like.”

To her dismay, her grandmother gave a little shudder.

“When she brought me here,” Sarah continued, “she’d say a prayer for them, and she made me say a prayer too.” She had a flash of memory: standing here next to her mother, eyes closed and palms pressed together. For a moment she could almost smell the sun-warmed stone and hear the comforting rattle of summer leaves overhead.

“If I’d known about this when she was a girl, I would have forbidden it,” Mrs. Kobayashi said. “These souls are lost and hungry, like stray dogs. If they sense a susceptible spirit, they latch on, poor things. And they drag down the living.”

It was hard to know how to respond. Mrs. Kobayashi was a practical woman with progressive views. But every so often, like now, Sarah was reminded that they came from different generations and different cultures.

“You must think I’m silly,” said her grandmother.

“No,” said Sarah. “I think it was a different time. A much scarier time.” The crumbling stones, with their aura of tragedy, did look rather sinister in the still gloom of November.

“I told her to stay away from these sorts of things.” Mrs. Kobayashi sounded hurt. “I made her promise.”

“Well,” said Sarah helplessly, “I guess it turned out all right in the end.”

“Soh. I suppose it did.”