What is the notion of death and passing in the Japanese culture like?

6 comments

1. It’s basically the Buddhist perspective.

2. This is a complex and complicated question. Mostly because much like many places Japan is not a monolith. Yes it is more homogeneous then most places but still, you have representation of different religions and differing levels of religiousness.

   In general we see death as a somber occasion, and the remembrance of family members long after there passing as an important cultural element.

   Past that, Shinto has an afterlife Yomi.
   Most people are not overly concerned with it in life however. There is not a preoccupation with preparation for the afterlife like in some other religions

3. It’s really difficult to say. Death is really familial, and it was strange seeing it in my own culture, let alone my grandfather in Japan. It’s believed the dead come to earth during obon, but like many modernised societies, there isn’t a strong religious reaction to these things (well in my family anyway). When I was younger we would make sure to go round the graves (ohakamairi) when I visited. many just have a shrine at home now, kinda like home shrines in dharmic religions. Ohakamairi is more important in retrospect. it’s the only time you can piece together family history as this is when the subject comes up,you are in front of names and surnames of long lost relatives. There was famine in some parts after the war and you learned about adoptions, blood relatives, long lost aunts and uncles, I knew what cancer was in Japanese before in english…

   In my experience, Japan was quite strict about doing the funeral quite soon after death, but that might have just been out of our control.

4. Putting a plug in for the movie Departures. It’s more about the funeral industry in Japan but is a really great watch and touches on this a bit.

   There’s also a Koreeda film called After Life about an imagined after life that is good but is a little art-house-y.

5. Shinto does not touch the topic of death because it is “kegare” (impure). It is left entirely up to the Buddhist part of the culture to sort out. Read “On Understanding Japanese Religion” by Joseph Kitagawa.

6. I feel the biggest thing about death in Japan is that it isn’t as big of a deal as in America. It’s more about obligation to family rather than “oh, what am I going to do without you?”

   Japanese tend to accept that death is inevitable and don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars prolonging a long and painful final chapter. If you get cancer, it’s more of, “well that sucks, better wrap things up here before I move on.” and your family is more about making you comfortable than demanding you stick around in agony for them.

   Check out “Living” on Netflix. It was written by Kazuo Ishiguro based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 “Ikiru”. Although it stars Bill Nighy and is set in 1950s London, it is still presents a very Japanese attitude towards death from a British point of view.