I have long admired Japan's attitude toward death, its acceptance, its no-nonsense attitude toward disposal and entombment, its brisk dispatch of ceremony and ritual, its relative lack of hypocrisy. Consequently it comes as a surprise to learn, upon reading this book, that Japanese funerals are modern inventions.
Though last rites can be as pretentious in Japan as elsewhere, they were historically much more ostentatious. Funeral processions, for example, were long, costly, theatrical and a social nuisance. They were done in eventually by the automobile and the traffic jams caused by jostlings for the right of way.
A few elements remain, those palanquin-type hearses are still to be seen, but here, as in many other ways, the modern funeral was shaped by the needs of modernity. These needs were not restricted to the stipulations of the motorcar but included those posed by the economic, political and social changes made necessary by the Meiji Restoration (1868) and the creation of a modern state.
For example, cremation, though widely practiced in pre-Meiji Japan, was banned in 1873 and described as unfilial -- an imputation to be avoided by a government that was attempting stability through what was later to be called "ancestor worship."
Also, cremation was perceived as somehow Buddhist and this acerbated the rivalry between these believers and the followers of Shinto. It was one of the latter, a priest, who opined that it was heartless to roast a body "as if it were a small bird or eel."
Nonetheless,in 1875 the prohibition against cremation was officially repealed and funeral "reforms" continued. Dress code, for example. In much of Asia, as well as Japan, white had been the preferred hue of mourning. Then, due to Western influence, it became black, and so it still remains.
In addition, the Buddhists took over the last-rites business. There are still Shinto ceremonies but you rarely hear of them -- Japanese funerals are virtually all (90 percent) Buddhist. These contain what few pre-modern elements remain in the modern Japanese funeral: sutra chanting, incense, posthumous names. Otherwise they are streamlined to fit contemporary needs.
Among these is the continued requirement to reflect a logic of social exchange between the living and dead -- and among the living themselves. In Japan (as elsewhere) a funeral is a means to accumulate and spend social capital. Mortuary splendor was moved from processions in the streets to the less public areas of homes and temples, but it remained necessary. Ostentation (though now much muted from pre-Meiji days) is still a social barometer.
There are many ways to show off after a death. Processions may be out, but posthumous names still cost as much, or more. Relatively expensive obituaries in newspapers are another means. Also mourning families can reject offered funeral offerings, thus indicating refined good taste, and also that the family is so highly placed that if they did not refuse they would be inundated by all the goodwill gifts foisted upon them.
Participants are not only incorporated, they are also differentiated. The order in which those gathered get to offer incense, for example, is important. And there are other more blatant ways that family members are distinguished from one another -- who gets to put flowers in the open coffin, who gets to pick out the bits of bone from the cremation ashes to place them into the urn.
"The purpose of a funeral is less to benefit the dead than it is to comfort the survivors," wrote one Meiji observer. This is a fact that undertakers the world over take advantage of. In Japan, even if processions have gone, death has not, and the bereaved still have to buy coffins, photographs of the deceased, miniature shrines to hold mortuary tablets, salt to sprinkle about and avert "pollution." They still have to rent the altar, the bier, the transport, and they still must pay the crematorium.
All of this, old and new, combines to create the contemporary Japanese funeral, one that has been wrought, like everything else, through social change. In presenting this interesting slice of cultural history, Andrew Bernstein has marshaled an impressive array of facts and ordered them to present a history of Japanese attitudes toward dissolution and its celebration.
He ably presents its spotted nature and concludes his very convincing presentation with: "The funeral industry thrives not because people want to discard customs of the past, but because they want to use practices, both old and new, to establish social connections lasting well in a collective future and a personal hereafter."
I still find the Japanese attitude toward death admirable, but I am now more tempered in my enthusiasm.
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