Author: John D. (Page 69 of 202)

A timely article recently appeared in the Japan Times about a subject which will be familiar to anyone who has seen Okuribito (Departures), the 2009 Oscar-winning film about Japan’s special funeral services.  The care and sensitivity with which the deceased are handled speak to basic Shinto values of purity, reverence and meticulousness.   (For the original article, see here.)

Sayuri Takahashi performs her skills in nokan — preparation of the dead before cremation — during a contest at the Life Ending Industry Expo in Tokyo on Tuesday. More than 200 companies doing businesses related to the end of life, such as funerals, are participating in the three-day exhibition. | AFP-JIJI

Japan’s death specialists converge at inaugural Life Ending Industry Expo
AFP-JIJI  DEC 9, 2015

Specialists in the fading profession of preparing bodies for funeral and cremation gave a rare glimpse of their skills at the opening of a Tokyo exhibition focused on the business of death and dying.

Practitioners of nokan — translated as “encoffinment” — took part in what organizers said was Japan’s first contest to demonstrate their techniques, as a pianist and a guitarist played peaceful, relaxing music.

Over 15 minutes, the contestants demonstrated their skill on Tuesday in dressing live models who laid still on a futon. Sayuri Takahashi knelt gracefully before a motionless female figure on the floor, gently maneuvering the arms and legs to dress her in a shirt, slacks and socks, with the light of artificial candles flickering behind.

PR shot from the film Okuribito

The partially clothed model was covered with a robe to hide exposed skin, the favored way of dressing the dead to maintain modesty when family members are watching.

The competition was part of the inaugural Life Ending Industry Expo, which has attracted more than 200 companies in the business of death. The expo runs through Thursday.

The craft of the specialists, who are known as nokanshi, is declining in bigger cities but remains fairly common in rural areas. The work overlaps somewhat with that of morticians in Western countries, though in Japan embalming is rare and wakes and funerals are still sometimes held in the family home.

It came to worldwide attention in 2009 when the film Okuribito (“Departures”) won the Oscar for best foreign-language film for its depiction of an out-of-work cellist who becomes a nokanshi in small-town Japan.

“We wanted the public to know more about nokanshi as there weren’t enough specialists after the 2011 disaster,” said competition organizer Koki Kimura, referring to the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in which more than 15,000 people died.

A panel of three judges examined not only how well the models were dressed but also how gracefully the nokanshi completed the process.  “The kindness and politeness toward the family of the deceased combined with efficiency are key,” said Shinji Kimura, one of the judges and an adviser to the lead actor in Okuribito. “We want to do our best for the final departure of the deceased,” said Kimura, who has 30 years of experience as a nokanshi. “So it should not be mechanical.”

Takahashi, the 27-year-old winner who was awarded a trophy and an undisclosed sum, said she started her job three years ago after learning about the profession following a death in her family where the body was tended to by a nokanshi.

“My relative’s face looked peaceful,” she said after the contest, adding that the Oscar-winning movie also inspired her choice. “I’m most happy when the family of the deceased tell me they’re grateful for what I did,” she said.

**********************

The full series of Shinto death postings are as follows:

Part 1: Overview
Part 2: Washing
Part 3: Offerings
Part 4: The Coffin
Part 5: Home rites
Part 6: The Wake
Part 7: Spirit Transfer
Part 8: Funeral rite
Part 9: Funeral procession
Part 10: Memorial rites
Part 11: Posthumous names
Part 12: Taboos
Part 13: Graves and afterlife
Part 14: Impurity
Part 15: Summing up

Entering into another world

This is part of an ongoing series about the Shinto way of death, adapted with permission from an academic article by Elizabeth Kenney.  It shows how traditional Shinto arrangements differ from those of the Buddhist funeral.  Though the research was carried out in the 1990s and some of the information is dated, the fundamentals still apply.  For the original article, see Elizabeth Kenney ‘Shinto mortuary rites in contemporary Japan.’

Conclusion
The Shinto funerals of today’s Japan are part of a crowded religious landscape unimaginable to the Edo Shintôists who first created funeral Shinto. Buddhist funerals are the norm, and most Japanese people find comfort in the familiarity of Buddhist rites. But the dominant position of Buddhism in the funeral establishment inevitably inspires opposition in a few Japanese.

Buddhist graveyard with Shinto torii

Some of these people want to create a unique funeral that expresses their own vision of life and death.  A few others are no-nonsense consumers who want to save money. But for most people who have a Shinto funeral it expresses their religious, cultural or family identity more than anything else.

(After all, there is no need to turn to Shinto if one is primarily seeking to avoid Buddhism. “Non-religious” funerals are socially acceptable and increasingly common. They tend to be solemn affairs, with a director of ceremonies instead of a priest. Incense-offering may still be a part of these non-religious funerals.)

As this article has outlined, Shinto mortuary rites follow the course set by Buddhism: 1. preparation of the corpse; 2. wake; 3. funeral; 4. procession; 5. cremation or burial; 6. grave; 7. posthumous name and memorial tablet; 8. memorial rites.

All the same, it is important to remember that many of these funeral practices are not inherently Buddhist but Japanese: giving a last sip of water; washing and laying out the corpse; covering the kamidana; offering food; purification after the funeral; the mourning taboos; ancestor worship. In fact, the Buddhist funeral dictionary classifies all the activities just listed as “traditional customs”, not as Buddhist rites.

To the Buddhist (or popular religious) elements, the Shinto funerals add one remarkable rite: the transfer of the spirit of the deceased from the body to the memorial tablet. In other parts of the funeral process, Shinto actions or objects are substituted for Buddhist ones.

Through a series of functional substitutes (of which tamagushi for incense is the most noticeable), a set of distinct Shinto meanings is established. The ritual is in place, available to Shinto priests willing to perform it and lay people wanting it. Ritual questions are answered, but (and not only to the outsider’s eye) other sorts of questions — about impurity, the afterlife, and more — remain open to individual resolution.

The tamagushi offering remains a distinctive mark of Shinto

This is part of an ongoing series about the Shinto way of death, adapted with permission from an academic article by Elizabeth Kenney.  It shows how traditional Shinto arrangements differ from those of the Buddhist funeral.  Though the research was carried out in the 1990s and some of the information is dated, the fundamentals still apply.  For the original article, see Elizabeth Kenney ‘Shinto mortuary rites in contemporary Japan.’

Impurity
Shinto funerals embody a central tension: a profound aversion to the impurity of death juxtaposed with the necessity of close contact with the corpse. As Robert J. Smith writes, “At the most fundamental level, a Shinto funeral is a contradiction in terms. Shinto abhors pollution in any form — that being virtually its only tenet”.

Kamigamo Shrine, whose priests carry out some ten funerals a year

One way of resolving the contradiction is to redefine impurity. When I asked two priests at Kamigamo Shrine how they could perform funerals, given the Shinto aversion to impurity, they responded by saying that the spirit of the dead is not polluted. In the funeral, they are dealing with the spirit, not the body, of the deceased. As it happens, these priests offered the same explanation Meiji reformers produced to justify the Shinto-style funeral for the emperor: the Emperor’s tamashii is pure and is separate from his body.

According to the priests, Kamigamo Shrine performs about ten funerals a year. This is not a large number for one of the nation’s major shrines. These Kamigamo funerals are performed mostly for the “shrine households” that live near Kamigamo Shrine and have been recognized as prominent patrons of the shrine for generations. Although the priests claim that pollution does not complicate a Shinto funeral, most Japanese people instinctively feel that death and Shinto should be kept apart.

Not all Shinto priests agree with their Kamigamo colleagues. A priest at a small shrine in suburban Osaka refuses to perform Shinto funerals, despite the fact that they are authorized by the Jinja Honchô (the central governing body for most, but not all, Shinto shrines). This priest, well into his eighties, said that people ask him to perform a Shinto funeral three or four times a year, but he always refuses. The reason? “Death is the most impure (kegare) thing.” For him, the matter is clear: Shinto must remain pure, separate from death.

Shinto funerals are not carried out in shrines, but in Buddhist cemeteries and elsewhere

Unlike this old priest, most lay people and many other priests often seem uncomfortable with the very word kegare and offer counter interpretations. One Jinja Honchô official explains that it is not a question of impurity or pollution; it is just that a shrine is a place for festivals and prayers to the kami, so people who have had a death in their family do not feel it is appropriate to go to a shrine.

In a similar fashion, quite a few Japanese people I interviewed resisted the notion of kegare (even telling me that there had never been any such notion in Japan) and preferred the concept of “mourning”. To them, it is a question of grief, respect for the dead, and proper restraint. It may be that the word kegare carries uncomfortable connotations of discrimination or superstition for some modern Japanese people.

When all is said and done, we must see that the polluting power of the corpse is still powerfully felt in Japan. The fact that Shinto funerals are never held within a shrine is testament enough to the force of kegare. A quick look at attitudes toward crematoriums and hearses demonstrates that Japanese people continue to shun the corpse.

The Japanese funeral hearse looks like a gilded temple on wheels

When asked what would be their response to a crematorium being built near their house, 69% of the 1,220 college students polled said they would “oppose it” . It is significant that even among college students, who might be expected to express “modern” views (whether or not they actually subscribe to them), there is a strong desire to avoid close contact with death and its processes. Another indication of the expulsion of the corpse from society is the fact that neighborhoods actually do mount organized protest campaigns against the construction of crematoriums or even funeral halls.

The Japanese hearse is a gorgeous vehicle. An elaborately carved rectangular structure is mounted onto the back of a black car. The hearse looks like a moving temple, with a curved roof and curling golden dragons. Beautiful or not, hearses are not welcome in everyday life. One hearse company is now called K.R. Company. The name of the company was changed five years ago, from Kobe Reikyû Jidôsha (Kobe Hearse). The workers’ families entreated the manager to change the name. Surely this is evidence of a deep uneasiness about death pollution. It is also another example of the magical power of words: avoidance of the taboo word “hearse” offers protection against the negative force of death.

A few years ago, K.R. Company bought a large plot of land and planned to use it as a parking lot for the hearses. The neighbors’ opposition has been so united and effective that the company has not been able to use the land. Understandably, the directors of the company feel beleaguered, since the very neighbors who don’t want a hearse parking lot next door will hire a hearse when they have a death in their family.

Wouldn’t Americans or Europeans also oppose a crematorium in their neighborhood? Yes. I have no doubt that the corpse is, if anything, even more abhorrent in the West. But Western notions of death pollution are a topic for another paper.