Funerals in graying Japan innovative, costly
By Eric Talmadge
Associated Press
TOKYO — Hidenobu Murakawa stops his tour for a moment and apologizes for the interruption. The crematorium is his pride and joy. He helped design it and he clearly loves to show it off. But it's the midday crunch, and he doesn't want to disturb the bereaved.
Chiaki Tsukumo • Associated Press
With 15,000 cremations each year, this sprawling facility on Tokyo's western outskirts is the busiest in Japan. About 40 cremations are carried out here each day, though Murakawa boasts that he has accommodated as many as 94.
Junya Matsumoto, right, his sister-in-law, and her son, partially hidden, are presented with a steel bowl of ashes and bone fragments of his mother by an attendant in an immaculate room not far from the crematorium at the Toda Mortuary near Tokyo. At left background is a machine, called a pulverizer, that quickly reduces cremated remains to a fine powder — a prerequisite for dispersal under Japanese law.
"Turnover is everything," he said as a procession of mourners walked back slowly from a row of ebony-and-gold oven doors at the end of a black marble hall, the smell of incense lingering in the air. "We're not a government-run operation. This is a private business."
And, as the crowds attest, business is booming.
Few nations are as rich as the Japanese — or as enamored of high tech and the pageantry of life's rites of passage. With precious little space left for traditional graves, innovation — from more efficient crematoria to virtual graveyards on the Internet — is the foundation upon which empires are being built.
But, even in death, there is no escape from the bottom line.
A typical funeral — just the ceremony — averages about $33,000, compared with under $10,000 for plot and everything in the United States or Britain.
Though practically universal here, cremation itself is a carefully packaged deal.
Murakawa, a former garbage incineration facility manager, explained that the 15 ovens at his crematorium are divided into three grades. For those willing to pay the extra fee, there are two "A" ovens, which have their own private hallway, a spacious area for viewing the remains afterward and various other accessories.
Tokyo's Aoyama Cemetery, renowned for its cherry trees and uptown location, is Japan's most famous graveyard. Since it opened in 1874, the remains of more than 110,000 people have been interred there, including politicians, writers, artists and actors.
Japan has thus been forced to explore its options.
Japanese account for about half of the 100 or so people whose encapsulated remains have been rocketed into space. A group of funeral homes recently bought an uninhabited island exclusively for ash dispersal, and tours are now available for people wanting to scatter ashes in the waters off Hawai'i. For those who live far from the family plot, Web sites offer virtual graves.
In 1991, the government legalized "natural funerals," a euphemism for the dispersal of ashen remains at sea or in designated hills or wooded areas. The idea of scattering ashes is catching on — one-fifth of all Japanese are believed to prefer it.
Toda Mortuary provides help for them, too.
In an immaculate room not far from the crematorium, Junya Matsumoto, his sister-in-law and her son stand by a table upon which rests a steel bowl of ashes and bone fragments. An attendant pushes a button, then two tinted glass doors open up to reveal a machine that looks something like a large milkshake maker.
The machine quickly reduces the cremated remains to a fine powder — a prerequisite for dispersal under Japanese law.
"My mother wanted to be scattered over the Pacific," Matsumoto said after running some of the powder through his fingers. "Many Japanese still aren't comfortable with this sort of thing. But it was her wish."
Despite all the high-tech touches, Japanese funerals are steeped in ritual and overwhelmingly conducted according to Buddhist practice.
The deceased is usually taken first to the home and put back into bed — with head pointing north — for a day or two. A wake follows, often at the home, with a great deal of rice-wine drinking by black-clad friends and relatives. After cremation, relatives use chopsticks to transfer the bones into the urn, which is kept on display at home for another 35 days before being buried.
