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Based on two years of fieldwork in Japan, this chapter explores the demographic and family changes as well as the economic and ideological factors motivating people to choose Tree-Burial. The first section introduces the concept, the community, and the ecological incentives and activities surrounding the Tree-Burial sites. In the second section, I in...
Citations
... For instance, dying a painless death without unnecessary medical interventions and at home is seen as natural and desirable (Long, 2005;. New burial forms such as ash scattering (Kawano, 2004), eitai kuyōbo (a grave that is permanently cared for by non-family members) (Hoshino, 2014), and tree burial (Boret, 2013) have also gained popularity in the country due to the high cost of graves, gender issues (women who do not want to be buried in their spouses' graves), and grave inheritance traditions among others. ...
This study focuses on the genre of ending notes in Japan. Ending notes serve as platforms for writers to express end-of-life wishes, end-of-life care decisions, and guidance for family and caregivers. This research conducts discourse analysis on the medical and nursing section of ending notes, aiming to understand the underlying societal concerns about aging and death in the country. The literature review highlights the historical emergence and increasing popularity of ending notes, discussing their role in the broader context of "shūkatsu." The methodology employs move analysis, a discourse analysis tool from Genre Theory, to analyze the medical and nursing section of 15 ending notes. The findings reveal three main purposes: to assist writers in communicating their thoughts, feelings, and choices related to the end of life; to guide writers in communicating their preferences and requests regarding aging and elderly care; and to advise writers on planning for the end of life as well as on the writing of the ending note. These purposes encompass topics such as end-of-life and life-prolonging treatment decisions, nursing care preferences, and caregivers, among others. The study concludes that ending notes, particularly their medical and nursing section, provide a means for individuals to exercise control over their end-of-life choices. The analysis highlights how the genre offers a tool for achieving a sense of agency in planning one's last years and eventual passing, reflecting broader societal shifts towards valuing individual autonomy in the face of longevity.
... There has been perhaps rather more discussion in the last twenty years of the cemetery as a natural landscape, reflecting the growing global engagement with the concept of "woodland" or natural burial, where interment takes place in a naturalistic setting. Substantial new scholarship has explored iterations of woodland cemeteries throughout the world (for example, Balonier et al. 2019;Boret, 2012). Clayden et al., 2015 includes detailed landscape analysis which pinpoints the sometimes messy contravention of regulations by cemetery users, again suggesting that evidence of user behaviours within "high concept" cemetery designs should not be overlooked. ...
This paper reviews cemetery publications over the last twenty years and considers current trends and new directions. In these two decades, cemetery research has included contributions from the humanities, social sciences and sciences and its inter-national reach has expanded substantially, echoing the expansion in geographic scope of death studies. The study of cemeteries has also benefited from a spatial turn within a number of disciplines: within death studies, conceptions of “deathscapes” or “necroscapes” has expanded the range of questions asked of all locations where death is encountered. The paper is ordered using eight core questions that can be asked of any kind of space used for the interment of the dead either as a full body or as cremated remains: how do we define this space?; how has this space come to be?; what does this space mean?; what does this space look like?; how is it used?; what do we express through this space?; how is the space managed? and how is this space valued? The review indicates that the field of cemetery studies is intrinsically interdisciplinary, where nuance of meaning and degree of significance is best captured in the interstices between and interplay of separate discipline traditions, themes and methods.
... The reason the graves are so difficult to maintain is that a regular donation has to be made to the temple in order to continue making use of the land. New mortuary practices, including ash scattering (Kawano 2010), tree burial (Boret 2013), and perpetual care (Rowe 2011) are all examples of ways in which people are trying to sustain a connection to the dead in response to demographic uncertainty (Suzuki 2013). While they depart from the rigid prescriptions of memorial based on the early twentieth-century family system (ie) (Tsuji 2006), they are not a radical departure from the tradition of long-term memorialization, the importance of the care of remains, and the belief that the actions of the living are constantly supported or disrupted by the power of the dead. ...
More people in Japan are living into old age than ever before, and most will receive care from a spouse or adult child in the years prior to death. I argue that this care, and the ways it affects emotional adjustment in bereavement, are the most important factors shaping patterns of mourning and memorial in contemporary Japan. By turning from the spectacle of collective and public rituals around death and examining individual narratives, I show how care becomes the basis for the experience of what Strait calls “entangled agency” and Marshall Sahlins refers to as “mutuality of being” with the deceased after the care has “ended.” I argue that providing care for a dying older person entails practices, sensibilities, and affective attunements that bring about transformations of the self that persist after death. The imagined transformations of the deceased in the “other world” mirror those created by carers through objects, images, memories, and practices of mourning.
... While trailing in the forest cemetery, his partner points at the overwhelming sense of life rather than death that one experiences. Their emphasis on life, the body of the dead as a gift and the ecological incentive seems recurrent in the context of ecological cemeteries in Japan (Boret 2013) and the UK . ...
... A woman who has suffered from the 'tyranny' of her mother-in-law and her husband chooses not to be enclosed in her spouse's ancestral tombstone and instead purchases an ash depository which does not require the performance of ancestral rites. Other novel forms of disposal include the scattering of ashes at sea or in mountains (Kawano 2010(Kawano , 2004, cremated bones compacted into Buddha statues, or buried under a tree (Boret 2013). The deceased buried in these cemeteries are not bound to the world of the living by family ties once representing the ideal social order in Japan (Rowe 2012. ...
Tree burial, a new form of disposal for the cremated remains of the dead, was created in 1999 by Chisaka Genpo, the head priest of a Zen Buddhist temple in northern Japan. Instead of a conventional family gravestone, perpetuating the continuity of a household and its identity, tree burial uses vast woodlands as cemeteries, with each burial spot marked by a tree and a small wooden tablet inscribed with the name of the deceased. Tree burial is gaining popularity, and is a highly-effective means of promoting the rehabilitation of Japanese forestland critically damaged by post-war government mismanagement. This book, based on extensive original research, explores the phenomenon of tree burial, tracing its development, discussing the factors which motivate Japanese people to choose tree burial, and examining the impact of tree burial on traditional views of death, memorialisation, and the afterlife. The author argues that non-traditional, non-ancestral modes of burial have become a means of negotiating new social orders and that this symbiosis of environmentalism and memorialisation corroborates the idea that graveyards are not only places for the containment of human remains and the memorialisation of the dead, but spaces where people (re)construct, challenge, and find new senses of belonging to the wider society in which they live. Throughout, the book demonstrates how the new practice fits with developing ideas of ecology, with the individual’s corporality nourishing the earth and thus re-entering the cycle of life in nature.
Nature, culture, and education are interrelated to each other to maintain the beauty, peace, and habitability of the earth planet for all living creatures. But it’s being a hidden subject in concerned authorities. Nepal is rich in natural biodiversity as well as cultural diversity. Education is the main medium to handover the (cultural) knowledge of nature conservation to their generation. Hence this study aims to explore the deep relationship between nature (environment), culture, and education. As per the nature of research objectives, qualitative research methodology has been adopted. The reviewed literature is related to the world's perspectives and practices to maintain interrelation among nature, culture, and education. Hence, this study can contribute to making people aware of environmental conservation by exploring the relationship of our nature, human culture, and education. From the study, all the concerned environmental justice communities, agencies, and institutions would endeavour to link their particular significant roles for nature conservation.
A growing number of older people in Japan lack reliable future caretakers for their family grave. By performing numerous memorial rites and maintaining their family grave, the bereaved typically transform the family dead into benevolent ancestors. However, what will happen to those whose ashes are not interred in a family grave? In this article, I examine one alternative to the family grave system – the scattering of ashes conducted by a citizen-based group called the Grave-Free Promotion Society of Japan (Sōsō no jiyū o susumeru kai). Contrary to the common assumption that it is usually childless people who decide on ash scattering, a number of the Society’s members in fact have adult children. What are the views of people who have adopted the scattering of ashes as a way of disposing of their own remains? Given that a grave remains a symbolic locus of familial continuity, the scattering of ashes seems to challenge the cherished ideas of filial piety and respect toward ancestors. By “returning to nature” through ash scattering and joining a benevolent force larger than their small family, older urbanites seek self-sufficiency in the postmortem world and attempt to lighten the ritual burden of their survivors regarding the maintenance of their family graves.
Data for this study come from extended fieldwork conducted in Japan from 2002 to 2004. By using cohort analysis, this study shows that ash scattering meets the mortuary needs of those generations that tend to lack a ceremonial asset or a culturally preferred caregiver.
Boret’s chapter draws on his research about new Japanese tree burials to reflect on the increasing level of agency of people have over the celebration of their own death. In Japan, the cremated remains of the deceased are expected to be enshrined in the grave of a household and join the body of the ancestors. Novel Japanese tree burials contrast with this “tradition” by providing individuals with the opportunity to choose with(out) whom one shares grave as well as their postmortem identity. Through a critical examination of changing notions of agency in mortuary rites, Boret refers to tree burial and other related non-ancestral practices as “people’s own grave” translating both the personalization of the burial space and people’s reappropriation of the representation of death.