In earlier posts, I've made reference to funeral customs, but I'll go into this subject a bit more today, since there are some interesting differences.
Long ago in Japan, people were buried, and if you were part of the Imperial Family, you were buried in a large, keyhole-shaped burial mound called a kofun. Common people were buried in large clay urns or stone coffins. In the 20th century, cremation started to become popular, with the practice gaining sharply in popularity after World War II. As of 2007, 99.81% of Japanese are cremated, although it is till not mandatory to do so, nationally. The only people who are buried these days are Emperor and members of the Imperial Family or Muslims, for whom cremation is taboo, and a few Christians. The current monarch, Emperor Akihito, has just announced plans for himself and his wife to be cremated, breaking a burial tradition of several hundred years. Their mausoleums will be smaller than usual, and eco-friendly, as well.
Just after a person dies, the Japanese moisten their lips with water. This is called "water of the last moment" or matsugo-no-mizu. Most Japanese have a household Shintō shrine, which is closed and covered with a piece of white paper to keep out the spirits of death. Japanese call this kamidana-fuji. (Remember that Shintō is all about purifying and protecting from evil. Shintō rites generally have nothing to do with death.)
Funerary lanternPhoto by Greg Ferguson |
On a small table is next to the bed, some flowers, incense and a candle are placed. Some people put a knife on the chest of the deceased, to be used by the spirit to defend himself or herself against evil spirits in the afterlife.
Embalming is not done in Japan. If a person dies in the hospital, the staff there will wash the body and orifices are stuffed with cotton or gauze. Otherwise the family will take care of this, or they can ask the mortuary to help. These days most men are dressed in a Western suit for burial, and the women are dressed in kimono, but the kimono is wrapped so that the loose flap goes to the left, rather than to the right. Someone from the mortuary will come and put cosmetics on the body, as necessary, just as we do here in the United States.
The body is put on dry ice in the mortuary or at home, and the family stays with the body until it is time to put it in a casket, which is usually made of particleboard covered with cloth these days. The family will also put in the casket a traditional white kimono, leggings, sandals, some paper money or coins for the deceased to pay a toll to cross the "river of three crossings" (Sanzu no Kawa), plus a few (burnable) things the deceased used to love, such as candy or cigarettes. (Bodies used to be dressed in white kimono for burial, and this is why ghosts are often depicted as wearing a white kimono.)
In Japan, as in the United States, there are special vehicles to transport dead bodies. Some of these look a lot like our hearses, but some vehicles have a Buddhist-style altar fitted onto the back. I remember seeing one of those and asking what it was. I didn't see too many of them, though, so I am assuming that they are perhaps less common in the cities than in rural areas.
If a funeral (お葬式 o-sōshiki) is held, it happens the day after the wake (お通夜 o-tsūya) . These days, everybody wears black to a wake or funeral. Formal kimono are black, anyway, but the ones they wear to a funeral have no extra design printed on them.
Above the knot, the word o-kōden is written. Below the knot is the giver's name, family name first. It looks like someone named Tai-ichiro Yamashita is the bearer of this envelope. |
Here's another envelope with a real mizuhiki knot around the envelope. |
Burning incense at a wake or funeral. Incense is burned to purify the area around the deceased. |
While the family is performing their incense offerings, the rest of the guests will perform the same ritual at another location behind the family members' area. Each departing guest speaks briefly to the survivors, often using the phrase, "Kono tabi wa, makoto ni goshūshō-sama desu" (or ending with "de gozaimasu" instead of "desu" if you are outside the family). Basically this is a set phrase offering heartfelt condolences. You can also say, "Okuyami mōshiagemasu." (My sympathies.) An American friend of mine got her phrases mixed up at one funeral she attended. Instead of "goshūshō-sama desu," she said, "gochisō-sama deshita," which is said at mealtimes in thanks for the food. I'm sure it was comic relief for the family.
The funeral takes place before cremation, and people are careful not to schedule a funeral for days that are known as tombiki (friend pulling), which are good for a wedding, but not suitable for funerals. As the Japanese say, "Nobody wants to join the dead in the grave." A funeral has much the same procedure as a wake - a priest recites Buddhist scripture while incense is offered. But there is one other thing that happens at a funeral. The priest gives the deceased a Buddhist after-death name. The idea behind this is that the spirit will have a new name in the afterlife, so whenever his or her earthly name is spoken, the spirit will not feel the need to come back.
The Buddhist posthumous name (戒名, kaimyō) is written in Chinese characters, some of which are so old and obsolete that nobody can read them! The length of the name is supposed to have to do with the virtue of the deceased, but it really generally depends on how much money the family donates to the temple. A really fancy name can be had for 1 million yen (nearly $1,000) or more. This has become a sensitive issue in Japan, particularly with the economy in such a slump. Some people complain that temples are putting pressure on families to buy more expensive posthumous names.
Once the funeral is over, the body is taken to the crematorium, where members of the family may watch the casket being put onto a tray, which is slid into the cremation oven. Then the family is asked to wait while the body is being cremated. There is usually an area with tables, set up like a cafeteria, where family can chat over tea. The process one to two hours, and less for a child. This time reminds me of the luncheon that is sometimes provided after a funeral in the United States, where family members have a chance to relax and console each other in a less formal way.
Here's the part that seems a little creepy. When the body has been reduced to ashes, some larger bones are left intact, unlike in the West. Once the bones have cooled, relatives of the deceased work two at a time to pick the bones out of the ashes, then deposit the bones in the urn. Some of the heavier bones, such as the thigh bone, must be lifted by two people. This ritual is called kotsuage. The mourners are provided with long white chopsticks for this task, and this is the only time it is OK to pass anything from person to person using chopsticks. This is why, when you are dining out, if you want to serve food to someone from a plate in front of you, you have pass the plate to them and let them take the food with their chopsticks. If you pass food from chopsticks to chopsticks, you will remind your Japanese friends of this kotsuage funeral custom.
Big no-no! |
OK, back to passing bones: the bones of the feet are picked up and deposited in the urn first, so that the deceased is not left upside-down for the rest of whatever. The bones of the skull are picked up last. The horseshoe-shaped hyoid bone from the back of the neck is the most important bone, but I have no idea why this is so, and most Japanese can't tell you, either. Sometimes the ashes are separated into two different urns, so that some of the ashes can go to two different places.
Internment of ashes. Notice that everybody is in black. |
A public cemetery in Tokyo |
Most families do have a grave site where everyone's ashes can be stored. Family grave sites are so common because land for graves is prohibitively expensive in Japan.
A family plot to store ashes averages about 2 million yen, or just over $19 thousand. A new service called Grave Apartments (お墓のマンション ohaka no manshon) is offered in some places, where a locker-sized storage unit can be purchased for 400,000 yen. Some of these have a touch-screen that shows a picture of the deceased, messages, family tree information. Some even have a QR code that can be read by smart phones.
One graveyard has reportedly been opened in Tokyo in a nine-story building by a Buddhist temple. The lower floors are used for funeral ceremonies, and the upper floors are used for storage of ashes. I haven't seen this one personally, but there is a superstition about the number four, because the Chinese reading of the character for four is a homophone for death. I wonder if there is a fourth floor in this graveyard building. (Just as buildings sometimes skip the 13th floor here, they sometimes skip the fourth floor in Japan.) Or maybe every floor is called "fourth floor." (Actually, they use the Japanese word for four when counting stories of a building, but still...)
The name on the left is that of a person who is still alive. the family name on this grave is Yamagawa. |
--> haka) is a stone monument with a space for flowers and incense, a little stone bowl for water, and a chamber or crypt underneath for the actual ashes. The names of the deceased may be engraved on the front or side of the monument or on a separate stone or wooden board on a stand behind or next to the grave. If you see a name written in red, that is a person whose ashes will be buried there later, but who is now still alive. (Couples who purchase memorial stones together in the United States sometimes do this, with the date of birth of the living partner engraved and a space left for the date of death.)
With the aging of the Japanese population, there has been a decrease in weddings and an increase in funerals. The price of funeral services has come down slightly in deference to the sagging economy, and some services are offered ala carte.
Red is a color associated with babies. |
One thing you see at a lot of temples is a little bald-headed statue called Jizo. These statues can be carved out of volcanic rock, clay, or wood, or cast in bronze. Jizo is the protector of women, children, the unborn, and travelers.
Travelers in Japan see Jizo everywhere: peaking out of the grass at the side of a road, standing at intersections, or sitting in a small wooden shelter built just for him.
You can find Jizo at temples too, sometimes holding a baby in his arms. At the temples, he guards the boundaries between physical and spiritual places, between life and death.
This one has elongated ears, like statues of the Buddha. |
As protector of children, people pray to him in hopes that their children will grow healthy and strong. Jizo also takes care of the Souls of unborn children or those who die in infancy. Children who die go to a place in the worlds of spirit called Sai no Kawara, where they have to create piles of stones into small towers. Every night the stone towers are destroyed by demons, so they have to start again the next day. This is why you see little stone towers alongside some Jizo statues. The adults make them for the Souls of these children in order to help them achieve their goal. People sometimes leave toys, candy or fruit as offerings at the base of Jizo statues, and they dress Jizo statues up in a bib and cap, or sometimes a scarf. The clothing for Jizo is often red, but it can be any color. People do this to accrue merit in the afterlife. Back in the 1970s, a new funeral tradition became quietly popular, that of mizuko kuyo, or a funeral ceremony for aborted fetuses. I heard this spoken of in hushed tones when women had abortions. Some married women did so because their husband was not yet ready to support a child. There are even temples that specialize in funeral ceremonies for aborted babies.
This is my favorite one. So cute. |
Sentai Jizo |
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