Signs of ritual pot smoking, possibly part of funeral rites, found in ancient Chinese graves
Archaeologists have unearthed the earliest direct evidence of people smoking marijuana from a 2,500-year-old graveyard in western China. In a complex of lofty tombs in the Pamir Mountains — a region near the borders of modern China, Pakistan and Tajikistan — excavators found 10 wooden ...
A sad legacy of postwar upheaval, neglected graves hinder safety works in Okinawa
The area around the banks of the Hija River in the town of Kadena, Okinawa Prefecture, is dotted with graves that are left unattended with no one to inherit them, posing a growing problem for urban development and safety works. Ownership of 90 percent or ...
60% of Japanese view idea of relocating or closing ancestral graves as positive: survey
Nearly 60 percent of the public is positive about taking action to close or relocate ancestral graves that are far from where they live, a survey says. The survey, carried out this month by Jiji Press, found that 59.6 percent of the respondents view acts ...
Japanese favoring Western-style gravestones for their cost and sturdiness: industry survey
The number of people who purchased traditional Japanese-style gravestones has halved over the past 14 years but Western-style memorials remain popular options, and those with designs unique to the deceased have experienced a sharp rise, according to an annual industry survey. This year's survey by ...
Pricey family graves a fading tradition in aging Japan
Last month, a man was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police for leaving human remains at a garbage collection station near his residence in Adachi Ward. The remains had been cremated and were mixed in with shards of funerary urns, and according to a ...
In Aichi, ashes of the dead shift to conveyer belt system as Japan grays
The first columbarium in the Chubu region to use an automated cinerary box conveyor system opened last month in Nagoya as the popularity of tombs that do not require much maintenance grows. In Tokyo, the number of such columbaria, where many sets of remains can ...
Yoshiki Saito, 76, moved his parents' remains in February from a graveyard in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, to Jokyuji Temple in the western Tokyo suburb of Fuchu, where perpetual services are offered to maintain and care for graves. But unlike other temples that offer similar perpetual ...
Japanese visit graves of kin who died at end of WWII in North Korea
A Japanese group on Sunday visited the graves of relatives who died in what is now North Korea during the chaos at the end of World War II. "I could finally come," said Yasuko Irie, 73, holding a family photo and making an offering of ...
In shrinking villages, abandoned graves are a sign of generational flight
In the nation's declining provinces, it is not only the living who are neglected. Family shrines that hold the ashes of generations are often overgrown or broken, something once unheard of in a society that reveres its ancestors. With the population dying off at an ...
In Japan, grave times for the tombstone trade
An Jianxing can see he is in a dying business. The gravestone designer, who takes pride in works featuring musical instruments and heavenly gates, says years of shrinking sales are driving him to close up shop in Japan and move back to his native China. "It ...
A group of nine Japanese citizens departed Tokyo on Wednesday for North Korea, to visit graves of relatives who died there around the end of World War II. North Korea has allowed such visits by Japanese citizens since August 2012, but this will be the ...
