Death And Funeral Practices In Contemporary Japan
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Death And Funeral Practices In Contemporary Japan
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Author : Doris L. Walters
language : en
Publisher:
Release Date : 1982
Death And Funeral Practices In Contemporary Japan written by Doris L. Walters and has been published by this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 1982 with Funeral rites and ceremonies categories.
The Price Of Death
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Author : Hikaru Suzuki
language : en
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Release Date : 2002-02-01
The Price Of Death written by Hikaru Suzuki and has been published by Stanford University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2002-02-01 with Social Science categories.
Funerary practices have long been a classic topic of anthropological inquiry, which has tended to focus on death rituals as expressions and reinforcers of community ties and values. In this book, the author looks at funerals as an urban business, based on her fieldwork at a large Japanese funeral company. Her central theme is the progressive commercialization of what once were primarily religious rituals. The book depicts the process of contemporary Japanese funerals, the practices of those who provide commercial funeral services, and the motivations and behavior of the mourners who purchase those services. In so doing, it examines the role of funeral companies in shaping Japanese cultural practices and changing an important aspect of Japanese society. The author addresses several related questions: What cultural changes accompanied the shift from traditional community funeral rituals to commercial funeral services? How did the mass consumption of commercial funerals produce cultural homogeneity while allowing for differences in individual services? How does the marketing of professional funeral services mediate changing cultural values? How have commercial services served to objectify changing concepts of dying, death, and the deceased in contemporary Japan? The author demonstrates that the funeral industry, the purchasers of funeral services, and Japanese values surrounding death are mutually dependent and are responsible for supporting, representing, and transforming cultural practices. Throughout, the author relates vivid and often moving details and anecdotes to lend a personal element to her study of the commodification of death in Japan.
Death And Funeral Practices In Japan
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Author : Hannah Gould
language : en
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Release Date : 2024-07-08
Death And Funeral Practices In Japan written by Hannah Gould and has been published by Taylor & Francis this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2024-07-08 with Business & Economics categories.
This book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the past, present, and future direction of death rituals and deathcare systems within Japan. As Japan heads toward a precarious future shaped by its super-ageing society, secularisation, and economic stagnation, the socioreligious structures that once organised death and funeral practice are becoming increasingly unstable. In their place, new social structures, technologies, and rituals for the farewell of the dead, handling of cremains, and commemoration of the ancestors have begun to emerge. The work is informed by the authors’ extensive research within Japan’s funeral, cemetery, and memorialisation sectors and the latest Japanese data sources and academic publications, many of which are not currently available in English. Providing readily accessible and contextualising information, this book will be an essential reference for graduate students and academics, as well as international policymakers and deathcare practitioners.
Death And Dying In Contemporary Japan
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Author : Hikaru Suzuki
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2013
Death And Dying In Contemporary Japan written by Hikaru Suzuki and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013 with Business & Economics categories.
This book, based on extensive original research, explores the various ways in which Japanese people think about death and how they approach the process of dying and death. It shows how new forms of funeral ceremonies have been developed by the funeral industry, how traditional grave burial is being replaced in some cases by the scattering of ashes and forest mortuary ritual, and how Japanese thinking on relationships, the value of life, and the afterlife are changing. Throughout, it assesses how these changes reflect changing social structures and social values.
Modern Passings
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Author : Andrew Bernstein
language : en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date : 2006-01-31
Modern Passings written by Andrew Bernstein and has been published by University of Hawaii Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2006-01-31 with History categories.
What to do with the dead? In Imperial Japan, as elsewhere in the modernizing world, answering this perennial question meant relying on age-old solutions. Funerals, burials, and other mortuary rites had developed over the centuries with the aim of building continuity in the face of loss. As Japanese coped with the economic, political, and social changes that radically remade their lives in the decades after the Meiji Restoration (1868), they clung to local customs and Buddhist rituals such as sutra readings and incense offerings that for generations had given meaning to death. Yet death, as this highly original study shows, was not impervious to nationalism, capitalism, and the other isms that constituted and still constitute modernity. As Japan changed, so did its handling of the inevitable. Following an overview of the early development of funerary rituals in Japan,Andrew Bernstein demonstrates how diverse premodern practices from different regions and social strata were homogenized with those generated by middle-class city dwellers to create the form of funerary practice dominant today. He describes the controversy over cremation, explaining how and why it became the accepted manner of disposing of the dead. He also explores the conflict-filled process of remaking burial practices, which gave rise, in part, to the suburban "soul parks" now prevalent throughout Japan; the (largely failed) attempt by nativists to replace Buddhist death rites with Shinto ones; and the rise and fall of the funeral procession. In the process, Bernstein shows how today’s "traditional" funeral is in fact an early twentieth-century invention and traces the social and political factors that led to this development. These include a government wanting to separate itself from religion even while propagating State Shinto, the appearance of a new middle class, and new forms of transportation. As these and other developments created new contexts for old rituals, Japanese faced the problem of how to fit them all together. What to do with the dead? is thus a question tied to a still broader one that haunts all societies experiencing rapid change: What to do with the past? Modern Passings is an impressive and far-reaching exploration of Japan’s efforts to solve this puzzle, one that is at the heart of the modern experience.
When Death Falls Apart
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Author : Hannah Gould
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2023-12-11
When Death Falls Apart written by Hannah Gould and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2023-12-11 with categories.
Through an ethnographic study inside Japan's Buddhist goods industry, this book establishes a method for understanding change in death ritual through attention to the dynamic lifecourse of necromaterials. Deep in the Fukuyama mountainside, "the grave of the graves" (o-haka no haka) houses the material remains of Japan's discarded death rites. In the past, the Japanese dead would be transformed into ancestors through years of ritual offerings at graves and in the home at Buddhist altars called butsudan. But in 21st-century Japan, this intergenerational system of care is rapidly collapsing due to falling birth rates, secularization, and economic downturn. Through the lens of this domestic altar, Gould asks: What happens when religious technology becomes obsolete? In noisy carpentry studios, flashy funeral showrooms, the neglected houses of widowers, and the cramped kitchens where women prepare memorial feasts, Gould traces the butsudan alongside the Buddhist lifecycle, exploring how they are made, circulate within religious and funerary economies, come to mediate intimate exchanges between the living and the dead, fall into disuse, and, maybe, are remade. Gould suggests how this form might be reborn for the modern world, from miniature urns inspired by sleek Scandinavian design to new ritual practices that embrace impermanence, such as scattering or the making of "bone buddhas". Read against a long tradition of theorizing memorialization, Japan's contemporary deathscape offers a case study of a different kind of necrosociality, based on material exchanges that seek to both nurture the dead and disentangle them from the world of the living.
Death And The Afterlife In Japanese Buddhism
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Author : Jacqueline I. Stone
language : en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date : 2008-08-20
Death And The Afterlife In Japanese Buddhism written by Jacqueline I. Stone and has been published by University of Hawaii Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2008-08-20 with Religion categories.
For more than a thousand years, Buddhism has dominated Japanese death rituals and concepts of the afterlife. The nine essays in this volume, ranging chronologically from the tenth century to the present, bring to light both continuity and change in death practices over time. They also explore the interrelated issues of how Buddhist death rites have addressed individual concerns about the afterlife while also filling social and institutional needs and how Buddhist death-related practices have assimilated and refigured elements from other traditions, bringing together disparate, even conflicting, ideas about the dead, their postmortem fate, and what constitutes normative Buddhist practice. The idea that death, ritually managed, can mediate an escape from deluded rebirth is treated in the first two essays. Sarah Horton traces the development in Heian Japan (794–1185) of images depicting the Buddha Amida descending to welcome devotees at the moment of death, while Jacqueline Stone analyzes the crucial role of monks who attended the dying as religious guides. Even while stressing themes of impermanence and non-attachment, Buddhist death rites worked to encourage the maintenance of emotional bonds with the deceased and, in so doing, helped structure the social world of the living. This theme is explored in the next four essays. Brian Ruppert examines the roles of relic worship in strengthening family lineage and political power; Mark Blum investigates the controversial issue of religious suicide to rejoin one’s teacher in the Pure Land; and Hank Glassman analyzes how late medieval rites for women who died in pregnancy and childbirth both reflected and helped shape changing gender norms. The rise of standardized funerals in Japan’s early modern period forms the subject of the chapter by Duncan Williams, who shows how the Soto Zen sect took the lead in establishing itself in rural communities by incorporating local religious culture into its death rites. The final three chapters deal with contemporary funerary and mortuary practices and the controversies surrounding them. Mariko Walter uncovers a "deep structure" informing Japanese Buddhist funerals across sectarian lines—a structure whose meaning, she argues, persists despite competition from a thriving secular funeral industry. Stephen Covell examines debates over the practice of conferring posthumous Buddhist names on the deceased and the threat posed to traditional Buddhist temples by changing ideas about funerals and the afterlife. Finally, George Tanabe shows how contemporary Buddhist sectarian intellectuals attempt to resolve conflicts between normative doctrine and on-the-ground funerary practice, and concludes that human affection for the deceased will always win out over the demands of orthodoxy. Death and the Afterlife in Japanese Buddhism constitutes a major step toward understanding how Buddhism in Japan has forged and retained its hold on death-related thought and practice, providing one of the most detailed and comprehensive accounts of the topic to date. Contributors: Mark L. Blum, Stephen G. Covell, Hank Glassman, Sarah Johanna Horton, Brian O. Ruppert, Jacqueline I. Stone, George J. Tanabe, Jr., Mariko Namba Walter, Duncan Ryuken Williams.
Bonds Of The Dead
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Author : Mark Michael Rowe
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2011-09-30
Bonds Of The Dead written by Mark Michael Rowe and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2011-09-30 with Religion categories.
Despite popular images of priests seeking enlightenment in snow-covered mountain temples, the central concern of Japanese Buddhism is death. For that reason, Japanese Buddhism’s social and economic base has long been in mortuary services—a base now threatened by public debate over the status, treatment, and location of the dead. Bonds of the Dead explores the crisis brought on by this debate and investigates what changing burial forms reveal about the ways temple Buddhism is perceived and propagated in contemporary Japan. Mark Rowe offers a crucial account of how religious, political, social, and economic forces in the twentieth century led to the emergence of new funerary practices in Japan and how, as a result, the care of the dead has become the most fundamental challenge to the continued existence of Japanese temple Buddhism. Far from marking the death of Buddhism in Japan, Rowe argues, funerary Buddhism reveals the tradition at its most vibrant. Combining ethnographic research with doctrinal considerations, this is a fascinating book for anyone interested in Japanese society and religion.
Bones Of Contention
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Author : Barbara R. Ambros
language : en
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Release Date : 2012-09-30
Bones Of Contention written by Barbara R. Ambros and has been published by University of Hawaii Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2012-09-30 with Nature categories.
Since the 1990s the Japanese pet industry has grown to a trillion-yen business and estimates place the number of pets above the number of children under the age of fifteen. There are between 6,000 to 8,000 businesses in the Japanese pet funeral industry, including more than 900 pet cemeteries. Of these about 120 are operated by Buddhist temples, and Buddhist mortuary rites for pets have become an institutionalized practice. In Bones of Contention, Barbara Ambros investigates what religious and intellectual traditions constructed animals as subjects of religious rituals and how pets have been included or excluded in the necral landscapes of contemporary Japan. Pet mortuary rites are emblems of the ongoing changes in contemporary Japanese religions. The increase in single and nuclear-family households, marriage delays for both males and females, the falling birthrate and graying of society, the occult boom of the 1980s, the pet boom of the 1990s, the anti-religious backlash in the wake of the 1995 Aum Shinrikyō incident—all of these and more have contributed to Japan’s contested history of pet mortuary rites. Ambros uses this history to shed light on important questions such as: Who (or what) counts as a family member? What kinds of practices should the state recognize as religious and thus protect financially and legally? Is it frivolous or selfish to keep, pamper, or love an animal? Should humans and pets be buried together? How do people reconcile the deeply personal grief that follows the loss of a pet and how do they imagine the afterlife of pets? And ultimately, what is the status of animals in Japan? Bones of Contention is a book about how Japanese people feel and think about pets and other kinds of animals and, in turn, what pets and their people have to tell us about life and death in Japan today.
Ritual Poetry And The Politics Of Death In Early Japan
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Author : Gary L. Ebersole
language : en
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Release Date : 2020-09-01
Ritual Poetry And The Politics Of Death In Early Japan written by Gary L. Ebersole and has been published by Princeton University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2020-09-01 with History categories.
This examination of death rituals in early Japan finds in the practice of double burial a key to understanding the Taika Era (645-710 A.D.). Drawing on narratives and poems from the earliest Japanese texts--the Kojiki, the Nihonshoki, and the Man'yoshu, an anthology of poetry--it argues that double burial was the center of a manipulation of myth and ritual for specific ideological and factional purposes. "This volume has significantly raised the standard of scholarship on early Japanese and Man'yoshu studies."--Joseph Kitagawa "So convincing is the historical and religious thought displayed here, it is impossible to imagine how anyone can ever again read these documents in the old way."--Alan L. Miller, The Journal of Religion "A central resource for historians of early Japan."--David L. Barnhill, History of Religions