{Inter} Cultural Japan

In his recent review of a study about funerals in modern Japan, Modern Passings by Andrew Bernstein, Donald Richie writes that what he has learned from this study, is that funerals in Japan are modern inventions. Apparently, Richie had thought that Japanese funerals were less hypocritical than in the West, and that may still be the case, but this book seems at least to have opened his eyes to their artificiality. Modern Passings is an interesting book and I can fully recommend it for its insights in the way cultures produce their own rituals, again and again.

Coming back on Richie’s remark, I would add that in Japan the attitude towards death is perhaps more natural than in the West, but that funerals are just as awful (such as the custom of picking the bones of the deceased from the still warm ashes after the cremation and transferring them with chopsticks to the urn).

[Ancient graveyard on Mt Koya. Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

On top of that, in Japan funerals cost heaps of money. As Ed Jacob writes in Quirky Japan:

Death in Japan is not only time consuming, but expensive as well. With an average funeral costing about US $40,000, this is the world’s most expensive country in which to die. Because of the land shortage, funeral plots and headstones are extremely expensive, starting at 700,000 yen for a small plot in the country, and rising to as much as 5,000,000 yen for a tomb with a view in a centrally located graveyard. The average seems to be somewhere around 2,500,000 yen.

But there is more. We also have the kaimyo, the spiritual name taken after death by a Buddhist, and written on a flat stick that is put up near the grave. The average price here (to cite Ed Jacob again) is 100,000 yen per character, so one stick can again cost many millions of yen. And we are not even talking about the cost of the funeral itself, the pompous hearse, or about the family altar that has to be set up afterwards (also easily one million yen), the many costly services that must be held in the first period after death to prepare a smooth way to heaven, and the bi-annual visits to the grave (although these only cost time).

By the way, the largest ancient graveyard can be found on Mt Koya, and although this is the headquarters of the Shingon sect, all Japanese would like to have part of their ashes buried here. It is a sort of spiritual homeland of the dead. Of course, such a wish is impossible, in the past it were only the daimyo, Japans rulers, who could buy graves here, and now it are the rich and the large companies. The picture below shows the grave of the Ezaki Glico company on Mt Koya (for its employees). Nice detail: note the stone in front with the narrow opening where visitors can insert their namecard… as if the dead still would care for such stuff.

[Namecard post in front of grave on Mt Koya. Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

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