God's Handmade Clothing

This is a god-like figure called Jizo.  S/he is a god for unborn children and early, unfortunate accidental deaths in Japan.  Local people make clothing (usually sewn cloth) as a gesture like clothing the children as they try to make it to heaven.  The children try to build a tower out of stone to climb up to heaven.  Every time the children go back down to get more stones from the river, something (a devil-like figure?) knocks the tower down.  Another story on the theme of noble hard work.  In Japanese, very hard work is referred to as "bone-breaking."  Someone crocheted clothing for this figure and the eleven others around it at a shrine Mikel and I passed on a walk.  The crochet work was probably bone-breaking in itself.