Every once in a while, Kumiko Kano meets a group of people with whom she has decided to spend eternity, one of a growing number in Japan who are shunning the expense and commitment of a traditional family grave. Instead of shelling out millions of yen on an elaborate tomb, which, according to religious custom must be lovingly tended by descendants, Kano and her late husband decided to be interred in a collective grave with thousands of others.
“My husband saw his eldest brother rack up huge costs for the family gravestone, and we decided that we didn’t need one that would be a burden to our children,” said Kano, 74.
“Today, children don’t always live near your place. Visiting a graveyard would be difficult if they live abroad, for example,” she added.
Photo: AFP
Instead, the couple joined a group for prospective gravemates that has established a collective final resting place, and organizes meetings — from book club to countryside excursions — so that ties may be formed before members are laid to rest.
In native Shintoism, as well as in imported Buddhism, successive generations have a duty of care for dead ancestors, who exist on a continuous plane with those still living.
Photographs of departed loved ones stare out from altars at the family home, where they are prayed to and offered gifts of fruit, alcohol or cigarettes in exchange for the protection they offer from the netherworld.
Their mortal remains are cremated and the ashes are kept in urns, which are stored in a costly tomb built on sacred ground.
The heavy granite obelisk bears the family name and will be the final resting place of the oldest son and his family in each coming generation.
Younger sons must establish their own tomb and daughters are co-opted into their husband’s grave.
Kano and her late husband decided about a decade ago that they did not want to build a new tomb, instead joining communal resting place group Moyainokai, which means “working together.”
Her husband, Jiro, was buried in their grave at the age of 76 in 2008, where he is now one of 3,000 whose remains rest there.
Ryukai Matsushima, a Buddhist priest whose father pioneered the movement, said Moyainokai was established 25 years ago “for people who were worried about their own burials because they had no kin or had only daughters.”
“It’s unfair that some people have someone to look after them when they die and others don’t, just because they chose a lifestyle of staying single ... or they didn’t have children,” he said.
Group members meet for excursions to the countryside or gather as a book club “to nurture ties not based on blood,” he said.
Kano, for example, recently visited a distant temple with some of those she will spend eternity with.
Like for the mother of two, it is no longer just a lack of offspring that is causing a rethink among those entering the autumn of their lives.
“Today, people with all sorts of backgrounds ... whether they have children or not, show interest in a collective grave like this,” Matsushima said. “Among them are women who say they don’t want to be buried with their husbands.”
A generation ago, married women had no choice about where to be buried, and would automatically be included in the family plot.
“But now you can say you don’t want to be buried there,” he said. “What was a religion for the family is transforming into a religion for individuals.”
Syohei Maekawa of Club Tourism International, which takes its clients on tours of possible final resting places, says wives wanting to escape their husbands in the hereafter are not uncommon.
“I’ve heard some of our customers talking to each other, saying ‘it’s off the record, but I don’t want to join my husband’s family grave,’” he said.
Some of the different options being offered are for ashes to be scattered at sea or for burials under trees.
Toyo University sociology professor Haruyo Inoue, who is also director of a not-for-profit organization promoting such possibilities, says wives who do not want to lie with their husband for eternity are the fifth-largest group of people seeking alternative afterlives.
The largest category, she says, are couples with only daughters, followed by those with sons (and potentially also daughters). Childless couples are third, while single people are fourth.
“For the wives, it’s not necessarily because their relationships with their husbands are bad, but rather because they want to do things their own individual way,” she said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese