On Friday, July 22, as the stifling heat and humidity of summer relented for just a fleeting few days, hundreds of people filled a hall at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, to listen to a lecture by philosophy scholar Alfons Deeken.
German-born Deeken, a professor emeritus at Sophia University in Tokyo, and long a leading promoter of death education in Japan, told the audience in lively, fluent Japanese that the more you think about your own death, the more you realize how precious your life is — and so the more you will live your life to the full.
"I have been a member of various health ministry committees," the 79-year-old professor said rather solemnly. "And according to the ministry's statistics, the mortality rate of Japanese people is 100 percent." It was his way of stressing that everyone has to face death.