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.’

Illustrations of Shinto altars and grave taken from Elizabeth Kenney’s original article

Shinto cemetery (thanks to Keith Adams)

The Shinto grave and afterlife
Shinto shrines do not contain cemeteries and, in general, Shinto families do not use Buddhist temple graveyards. Therefore, most Shinto graves are located in public cemeteries or on private land (even in a family’s own backyard).

Typical Buddhist-style grave (for the poet Fujiwara no Teika)

Naturally, tombstone styles that seems “too Buddhist” are avoided (for example, the old-fashioned pagoda-style tombstone. It goes without saying that a Shinto tombstone will bear no Sanskrit letters and no Buddhist phrases (such as namu amida butsu or namu myô hô rengekyô). A modern Shinto tombstone is typically an obelisk. A similar rectangular structure is standard for new Buddhist graves, but with no taper toward the top. The difference is precisely that: difference, a subtle variation that signifies Shinto identity. There is nothing inherently Shintô-esque about the obelisk.

A Japanese tombstone typically has the words “the grave of X family” engraved on the front. In the case of a Shinto grave, the word haka is avoided — apparently, a taboo Buddhist word — and the term okutsuki is substituted.

As we have seen, incense is marked as Buddhist, so the Shinto grave does not have a stand for offering incense. Instead, there is sometimes a stone table in the same shape as the wooden table used for Shinto offerings during funerals. The Shinto grave may be encircled by a tama-gaki picket fence, a style of fence often seen at Shinto shrines.

Peering into the afterworld: according to folklore, this boulder in Shimane Prefecture separates our world from that of Yomi, or the dead

The afterlife
Shinto funerals now have a codified form, but there is no corresponding codification of the Shinto conception of what happens to the deceased. The Shinto establishment discusses the afterlife only in terms of the mythology, providing historical and scholarly perspective but not prescribing any eschatological views for its followers. Thus, notions of the afterlife remain diverse and more suited to anthropological than doctrinal investigation.

Buddhist-style grave for the kabuki dancer, Izumo no Okuni

As we have seen in the funeral, the Shinto dead become guardian kami of their household. This is a postmortem position granted to all the dead, regardless of their virtue or status in life. Beyond that, people are free to envision the afterlife in whatever terms and to whatever extent they wish. Most Shintôists, whether priest or lay, have only modest interest in the question of what happens after death.

One Shinto priest had this to say: “After death, the spirit becomes a bird and goes to the top of the house. Then it flies to a nearby tree and stays there for fifty days. After that, the bird-spirit goes to the land of the dead.” This is an unusually definite delineation of the postmortem destiny. It is clearly indebted to mythological themes.

For the most part, Shinto followers have no such definite visions and do not feel a need for them. The funeral ritual is important for a variety of other reasons: because it honors the dead, because it serves as a crucial expression of the family’s non- Buddhist identity or anti-Buddhist sentiments, but not because it is a key to the Shinto afterlife.

Bird-spirits migrate from the land of the living to the realm of the dead

Tenth-century ‘Engi shiki’

Taboo words
Japan has a long tradition of verbal taboos. For example, one Edo-period Shinto funeral text includes a list of seven taboo words that must not be uttered during a period of mourning. Buddhist words are avoided, and neutral or negative terms are substituted. For example, for the word “sûtra” substitute “dyed paper” (Buddhist sutras were written on paper than had been dyed yellow).

These seven taboo words are found in the Heian- period Engi-Shiki, where they are listed as taboos for imperial princesses consecrated to the Ise Shrine. In addition, the Engi-shiki gives seven other “outer” taboo words concerned with death (e.g., for “death” say “to get well”), and so forth.

Nowadays, the Japanese person who observes the Engi-shiki verbal taboos is rare indeed. But people who attend a Shinto funeral, whether as relatives or guests, should avoid a modern set of taboos words. As in the Heian period, the principle is clear: do not utter Buddhist words in a Shinto context. Few people will know the inauspicious utterances beforehand, but etiquette books provide guidance.

The Heisei (not Heian) taboo words include: jôbutsu (“to become a Buddha,” meaning “to die”), meifuku (“happiness in the afterlife”), meido (the afterlife), and ekô (“transfer of merit”).  Substitute words are kyusei  (“to pass away”), kiten  (“return to heaven” ), and takai (“the other world”).

A Buddhist funeral dictionary, addressing a readership of Buddhist priests, suggests that it would be impolite for a Buddhist priest to utter Buddhist words at a Shinto funeral but it is all right to chant nembutsu or daimoku under his breath.

Finally, the word sai is used for the rituals that comprise a Shinto funeral and for the funeral itself. In contrast, the Buddhist funeral is sôshiki. Sai, the same word as matsuri (“festival”), has a Shinto “feel” to it.

Japanese ritual occasions usually entail a gift of cash that has been enclosed in a ceremonial envelope. Etiquette books provide detailed guidelines on who should give how much to whom — and what to write on the envelope. It is taboo to use Buddhist language for the cash gift at a Shinto funeral. For a Buddhist wake or funeral, the guest should write on the envelope o-koden (“for incense”) and the bereaved family should write o-fuse (“donation”) on the envelope containing the payment to the priest. The Shinto substitute are tamagushi ryô (“tamagushi funds”) for the guest’s cash gift and o-harai-ryô (“purification funds”) for the payment to the Shinto priest.

courtesy quora.com

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.’

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Posthumous names

Memorial tablets at Mt Haguro (courtesy orientalcaravan.com)

The Shinto dead, like their Buddhist colleagues, receive new names, but the Shinto postmortem sobriquet is not nearly as elaborate as the Buddhist kaimyô. In the Shinto case, the deceased keeps his ordinary name and a title is appended: mikoto or ushi no mikoto for men, and hime no mikoto or toji no mikoto for women. These terms sound like the appellations of Shinto deities and are meant to indicate that the deceased person has indeed become a kami.

The Shinto posthumous names are not only simpler than Buddhist kaimyô but cheaper. The Shinto name also has the practical advantage of preserving the name used in life, so there is no problem identifying the ancestors. To some Japanese people, the Buddhist posthumous name is an impenetrable string of expensive kanji that perpetuates status differences into the afterlife.

A book on how to produce one’s own funeral provides the following interesting example: “U-san, age 69, of Nagano Prefecture held a Shinto funeral for her husband. [She said,] ‘When my husband’s parents died, they received Buddhist kaimyô. However, my husband never really liked the kaimyo. He insisted that he didn’t need a kaimyô for himself, that he hated the smell of incense and so forth. So when he died, we had a Shinto funeral. In Shinto, there is no kaimyô, just a memorial tablet with your own name, saying So-and-so-no-mikoto “‘.

In the case of U-san and her husband, an antipathy toward Buddhism (the fact that the fragrance of incense repelled him is very telling) became crystallized in their rejection of the kaimyô. In this case, his parents’ kaimyô, which he didn’t like but had to live with until he died, came to symbolize Buddhist priests as domineering, insensitive, and greedy.

The Shinto funeral, in contrast, gave the family more control over their own posthumous destinies. For this family, Shinto, somewhat unexpectedly, was a liberating alternative, offering release from the grip of Buddhism.

Memorial tablets stand near a Shinto shrine on Mount Haguro ( Chris Rainier/CORBIS)

A mitamaya spirit shelf (see bottom of page for further explanation)

This is Part Ten 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.’

Memorial rites
Shinto memorial observances are modeled on Buddhist memorial services. Buddhist memorial services are held every seven days after the death until the forty-ninth day (7 x 7).  According to Buddhist doctrine, a person spends forty-nine days in the intermediate existence before his next rebirth, so this transitional period is crucial.

According to popular understanding, it takes forty-nine days for the spirit to go the Pure Land (or to be reborn). During that interval, the spirit can benefit from the prayers and offerings of the living.
Some places in Japan count the day of the death itself as day number one, and other places do not. That is to say, if a death occurs on a Sunday, the seventh-day memorial service is held either on the next Saturday (six days later) or the next Sunday (seven days later), depending on the area.

Shinto rejects multiples of seven, since the Buddhist connotations are too strong. Instead, Shinto, using multiples of ten, and holds its rituals on the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth and fiftieth days after death. (Notice that fifty ends up very close to the Buddhist forty-nine.)

The “epitaph” is described as a copper sheet or stone slab one shaku long (about 30 cm). Inscribed on the epitaph are the name and rank of the deceased and the dates of his birth and death. The single “epitaph” mentioned by Gorai (1992) is something different, for it reads like one of the Chinese land-purchasing contract for graves discussed in Anna Seidel’s “Post-mortem Immortality.” It seems that the Shinto dead need some identification and a brief curriculum vitae to take with them as they cross the border into a strange country.

The mourner’s staff is a widespread folk custom, and there is nothing specifically Shinto about it. In a Buddhist context, the staff is a pilgrim’s staff or a monk’s staff, which the deceased will use on his journey. In the folk tradition, the staff may represent fertility (phallic?) or generational continuity (which, after all, depends on fertility), or it may offer a kind of companionship to the deceased in his grave. Sometimes the staff is stuck straight up on top of the grave mound, making it a kind of lightning rod to attract the spirit or gods. The staff then also mimics the chopsticks stuck into the rice.

A Shinto graveyard in Kyoto Prefecture (courtesy Keith Adams)

In the Buddhist case, the next memorial service after the forty-ninth day is held on the hundredth day. Then, on the first anniversary of the death, another memorial service is held. Afterwards, anniversary rites are held in the following years: third, seventh, thirteenth, seventeenth, twenty-second, twenty-seventh, thirty-third, fiftieth, and hundredth. Each of these anniversaries is calculated by counting the year of the death as 1 , so that the “third” anniversary is two years after the death, and so on.

In Shinto, the tenth-day and following memorial services are often conducted in front of the grave. After one year, the memorial services are held in the house. Later, Shinto memorial services are held on the following anniversaries of the death: first, second (optional), third, fifth, tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, fiftieth, and hundredth.

After fifty days, the reiji is moved from its solitary position on the temporary altar to the household ancestral altar, where it joins the other ancestors. The spirit has passed through its liminal period, shed its pollution, and is ready to assume responsibilities as the family’s guardian deity. The house is purified and the paper is removed from the kamidana (spirit shelf) and ancestral altar. The family is now free from impurity and may worship at a shrine as usual. In practice, many families prefer to wait longer than fifty days before entering a shrine, often for one year.

Mitamaya, a place for enshrining the spirits of ancestors