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Abstract
Based on extensive fieldwork, Nature's Embrace reveals the emerging pluralization of death rites in postindustrial Japan. Low birth rates and high numbers of people remaining permanently single have led to a shortage of ceremonial caregivers (most commonly married sons and their wives) to ensure the transformation of the dead into ancestors resting in peace. Consequently, older adults are increasingly uncertain about who will perform memorial rites for them and maintain their graves. In this study, anthropologist Satsuki Kawano examines Japan's changing death rites from the perspective of those who elect to have their cremated remains scattered and celebrate their return to nature. For those without children, ash scattering is an effective strategy, as it demands neither a grave nor a caretaker. However, the adoption of ash scattering is not limited to the childless. By forgoing graves and lightening the burden on younger generations to care for them, this new mortuary practice has given its proponents an increased sense of control over their posthumous existence. By choosing ash scattering, older adults contest their dependent status in Japanese society, which increasingly views the aged as passive care recipients. As such, this study explores not only new developments in mortuary practices, but also voices for increased self-sufficiency in late adulthood and the elderly's reshaping of ties with younger generations. Nature's Embrace offers insightful discussion on the rise of new death rites and ideologies, older adults' views of their death rites, and Japan's changing society through the eyes of aging urbanites. This book will engage a wide range of readers interested in death and culture, mortuary ritual, and changes in age relations in postindustrial societies.
... These ideas have spatial implications, as the gifts have a material form and the living need locations to offer them. Around East Asia, limitations on cemetery space and the increased mobility of the population drive up costs associated with obtaining graves and visiting them to present gifts at proper times, which in turn can motivate private citizens as well as governments to advocate alternative mortuary practices, such as scattering, that are less spatially intensive (Kawano 2003(Kawano , 2004(Kawano , 2010(Kawano esp. 2010Kong 2012;Rowe 2011). ...
... They told or intended to tell relatives to not bother themselves with attending to them after death -at least not to the point of making special trips to a grave (cf. Kawano 2010). We return to this point below. ...
... Nonetheless, avoiding burdening others following death is a complex issue, because the desire not to be cared for through ordinary ancestorrelated rituals can be just as burdensome as the provision of ritual care. Kawano (2010) found that individuals electing non-traditional forms of burial like ash scattering can be viewed as problematic (by those used to and supportive of the traditional approaches) precisely because their choices make traditional approaches -which provide a means of keeping deceased loved ones in mind or psychologically and socially close -difficult or impossible. 10 The nature of the conflict shows the reach of these ideas about the dead being properly emplaced. ...
This article analyzes how Japanese handle problematic situations involving the care of the dead. Drawing upon narratives of hauntings, dream visitations, and split-grave internments, and other ethnographic data collected in northern Japan, we show the central importance of ongoing ritual attention and attentiveness to the needs of the dead as a means of maintaining proper emplacement of ancestral spirits. We argue that ongoing concerns about maintaining connections between the dead and their proper loci is a manifestation of concerns about constructing and maintaining social relationships among the living and between the living and the dead, providing a way to physically represent and work through social problems displaying interdependencies. In their emphasis on emplacement as an ongoing process, our informants' narratives reveal a different way of thinking about the divide between the living and the dead, and the possibility of its transcendence through the actions of the living.
... Studies of death in Japan have generally subscribed to this format, shedding light on the continuing roles of ritual professionals, religious and secular alike, in the difficult task of restoring the rent fabric of kin and community in ways that attempt to adapt to cultural and social changes (Kawano 2010;Rowe 2011;Smith 1974;Suzuki 2002Suzuki , 2013Tsuji 2006). Fewer anthropologists have focused on the dying process itself, although this has changed since the 1990s, with increased concern over the rapid biomedicalization of death and rising costs of end-of-life care in an aging society (Becker 1999;Kondo-Arita 2012;Lock 2002;Long 2001Long , 2003Long , 2005. ...
... 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.
... 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. ...
... Referring to the cemetery as resulting from a process, the authors reveal that graveyards 'are not static but are continually reproduced and also altered by individual and institutional actions that reflect (but also help to redirect) changing cultural attitudes linking death and nature' (Francis 2005: 197). The outcome of such research could, I would suggest, further open a window on the process of liberalization of contemporary Japanese ways of death already reflected, I believe, in recent studies of funerals H. Suzuki 2013) and burials (Kawano 2010;Rowe 2011). ...
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.
... Despite the inevitability of death, its acceptance remains a difficult process and a tough matter to talk about in the family. A decline in traditional mourning and the loss of sentimentality with cremation (Parkes et al., 2015) are some individualistic death practices that strain the collectivist's strong beliefs in superstitions (Wong, 2012) and post-death rituals to memorialize the dead (Kawano, 2010), all of which aggravate death acceptance. Considering that there are no standard behaviors for show of fear of death, grief and loss, it is manifested differently around the world depending on culture, social desirability, and social norms (Lange et al., 2018). ...
The fear of death and the dying process may be attributed to cognitive, emotional and behavioral buffers of an individual. Recent studies suggest that age plays an important role in the absence or presence of death anxiety among varied groups. The dynamics of death anxiety is attributed to certain cultural factors such as family ties, traditions and faith. While there had been empirical attempts to examine death anxiety among older adults, little is known about the lived experiences of Filipino older adults. This paper argues that a more contextualized perspective is needed relative to acknowledging, preparing and accepting the inevitability of death in a collectivist society such as the Philippines. Hence, this phenomenological inquiry looked into the death anxiety experiences of a select group of twelve (12) Filipino older adults, aged from 62 to 75 years old. From the vertical and horizontal analyses of the narratives shared during a semi-structured interview, a model called Death Anxiety Refraction model was conceptualized. This model captures three interlocking dimensions (context, emotional and actionality) that describe the nature of death anxiety among older adults. Implications of the emerged model to geriatrics, gerontological psychology and educational gerontology are discussed in this paper.
... However, the state is also developing alternative methods of disposal that reduce pressure on land use, such as cordoning off a part of a beach for individuals to scatter ashes into the sea, or creating an inland ash-scattering garden within a columbarium. While such policies tend to be ecological and/or accepted in multiple cultures (Kawano, 2010;Kellaher et al., 2005;Rumble et al., 2014;Sørensen, 2009), resistance to such policies is not unheard of amongst Chinese individuals (in Singapore or otherwisee.g., Debutts, 2017;Heifetz, 2017), who see scattering (and the absence of graves) as the destruction of a spirit's home. Such resistance suggests that these individuals see the act as removing ways of interacting with the deadcreating spaces of finality and forgetting, rather than spaces of continuity and memory. ...
When thinking about deathscapes and how they are assembled, current literature often points to the presence of material objects as ways in which individuals evoke the absence of the dead. These objects can be both performative and communicative, becoming a channel of communication. But the literature has so far mostly neglected the ability of spirits to ‘talk back’ to the living through objects and bodies, and in doing so influence and have effect on the latter’s actions. In this paper, I will investigate the ways in which spirits are seen to have agency in deathscapes. I propose the concept of material proxies of consociation, denoting objects/bodies which act as ways for spirits to not just communicate, but interact with the living. Using two visual ethnographic case studies, one of the divining blocks and the other of a ritual exhumation, I will demonstrate that spirits can indeed be seen to be active and effective agents in the assembling of deathscapes. In doing so, this paper offers new ways of understanding three things – the role and importance of spirits in deathscapes, how the absent is made present, and how the spaces in which living and dead interact are constructed and shaped.
... The three papers of this section draw on the growing body of literature (e.g. Boret, 2014;Kawano, 2010Kawano, , 2014Long, 2004Long, , 2005Suzuki, 2000Suzuki, , 2014, which reflects the intensified interest toward these problems since the late 1990s, and extends it by looking at some hitherto unexplored topics from the specific angle of governmentality. Celia Spoden explores how dying has become the subject of individual decision-making and how the right to die movement has promoted "death with dignity" (songenshi) and advance decision-making as one form of "good death" since the late 1970s. ...
Why a special issue on death and dying? As Clive Seale states, the “[s]tudy of the human experience of death allows us to understand some fundamental features of social life.” According to him, the fact that we are embodied beings means that we are mortal. Knowing about our mortality is constantly threatening to make our lives meaningless. Therefore, we engage in social and cultural practices to give meaning to death and dying. Examining how practices around death and dying have changed and vary in different socio-cultural contexts enables us to realize how much our constructions of death and dying are contingent on the historical, socio-cultural and political context.
... The educational system has undergone major institutional changes, a weak economy and unstable poli- tics that were new conditions of the early 1990s continue to take a toll on individual lives and aggregate prosperity, and the society has been badly shaken by the triple disasters of March 2011Brinton 2011;Eades, Goodman, and Hada 2005;Gill, Steger, and Slater 2013). Partly by choice and partly by necessity, work careers have shifted from the secure to the insecure; men and women marry later and have fewer children; divorce is rising along with the number of never-married people; women- often against structural obstacles-have longer work careers; and there is less interest in meeting official expectations of family elder care (Alexy 2010;Kawano 2010;Kelly 1993;Kelly and White 2006;Nakano 2011;Nakano and Wagatsuma 2004;Rosenbluth 2007;Schoppa 2008;White 2002). ...
... If mourning is a matter of accepting that loss has produced a change in oneself (Butler 2004: 20), then the cultural tradition of memorial places this change in the context of a lunar aesthetic of transience and transcendence. Even for those who rejected other aspects of religious participation, or who choose alternate forms of post-mortem care, the link between death and the hope of transformation remained a common theme (Boret 2014; Kawano 2010; Rowe 2011). A widowed 71-year-old man, Mr. Satō, who made regular visits to his wife at her grave, for example, expressed it as follows. ...
In Japan, today, longevity has not meant a reduction in years of dependence. As a result, anticipation of a long life also brings the troubling
anticipation of problems like chronic illness and loneliness. How do older adults facing such a future create hope? The purpose of this paper is
threefold: (i) to propose a conceptualization of hope as “lunar aesthetics,” that is, not as anticipation of achievement but as a process of loss
and renewal; (ii) to link this process to aesthetic forms and ritual practices from my fieldwork with older adults in Kyoto; and (iii) to critically
evaluate the ways current formal long-term care diverges from “lunar” hope. Drawing on Japanese associations between the moon, hope, and
rituals memorializing the spirits of the dead, this paper argues that older adults engage with an alternative interpretation of hope based on
transience and transcendence. Both of these offer hope to older adults by reorienting the temporal boundaries of personhood, to experience
change (including decline and death) as an inherent aspect of becoming part of a larger narrative of linked generations or the natural state of
life.
... The question of elder care has been the focus of much media attention in Japan, with the anime Rōjin Z (Kitakubo 1991) providing a satirical take on technological intervention in the care of the elderly, in a plot that also involves computer hacking and spirit pos-session. Caring for, and disposing of, the body after death in Japan, a process which has much to say about understandings of personhood, has been the focus of a number of academic studies, including Namihira (1990Namihira ( , 2004, Suzuki (2000Suzuki ( , 2013, Kawano (2010), and Boret (2014. In the field of popular culture the care of the dead body provided the subject of the film Okuribito ('Departures') (Takita 2008), a critical and popular success both within Japan and internationally. ...
... However, reflecting a Western, particularly Anglophone model of identity based on individualism, they are not easily translated into the Japanese context, in which interdependency is highly valued. For example, open disclosure flies in the face of wanting to protect the patient from the distress of a terminal diagnosis, whilst personal involvement and choice are at odds with the norm of entrusting more knowledgeable others with one's wellbeing (Paton and Wicks, 1996;Kawano, 2010). ...
Drawing on the ‘affective turn’ in the social sciences, this paper demonstrates the value of studying responses to death and loss in illuminating the role of the body and emotions in managing identities in contemporary societies. Looking across cultures at an experience that may threaten identity and continuity of being provides a broader, more complex and nuanced picture of social identity and participation in society. In focusing on societies with contrasting models of identity, it considers the implications of an emphasis on individualism in Britain and interdependency in Japan for rebuilding identity in each context. Drawing on qualitative interviews with British and Japanese mourners, the paper illustrates how continuing relationships with deceased loved ones were key to mourners' attempts to repair shattered identities. In particular, it examines the affective nature of post-mortem relationships and the way mourners managed these through situated ‘affective practices’. In breaching the boundaries between the living and the dead, these practices revealed intersubjective, dynamic and shifting experiences of embodiment and identity that may be obscured by more dominant cultural scripts. As such, these practices raise ontological and epistemological questions about how mourning and social being are theorized.
As one of the first countries to publish a comprehensive national AI strategy, Japan has not only pioneered many of the technological advancements, but also contributed tremendously to the popular understanding of the means to create a post-industrial society. In addition to the official documents that frame the upcoming AI revolution in the eyes of the citizens, Japan has been working towards creating a legislative system that covers the issues arising due to the emerging technologies, especially robotics and AI. The purpose of this study is to analyse different aspects of Japan’s national AI strategy, and understand why the country prioritises tackling socio-economic issues such as well-ageing and labour shortages by diving deeper into the published documents that constitute the basics of the current and future laws and legislature. Furthermore, the study offers an outlook about the insights to be gained from the Japanese experience, while the country creates a full-fledged legal framework that works with and for our changing social dynamics in the AI-powered future.
Since 2009, the preparation for one’s own end-of-life (shūkatsu) has become a media buzzword. Conceptualized by the funeral industry, it provides a model subject formation along with a set of self-technologies that individuals are supposed to follow. Following the lines of governmentality studies and subjectivation research, this paper scrutinizes shūkatsu by looking both at the model subjects’ programmatic implications and at the actual ways of subjectivation as practiced by the addressees of the program. The analysis is based on field research and interviews with both shūkatsu suppliers and addressees.
Ageing populations present serious challenges to societies for the provision of care and
support for their eldest members. These include increased demands on families for care at
home, shortages of professional care workers and facilities, and financial strains on
governmental budgets. However, these conditions also provide space for the elderly to
adapt institutions to secure care and support. This essay examines the ways the elderly
work through Min-Iren, a federation of medical institutions in Japan, to meet their needs.
Premised on a “democratic” model of solidarity, Min-Iren institutional structure provides
participating elderly substantial power to modify ostensibly medical institutions. Drawing
from 18 months of fieldwork, this essay ethnographically explores how the elderly
refashion Min-Iren clinics and hospitals to offer venues for socializing, community
building, and political action as well as conventional medical care. On the medical side,
Min-Iren institutions enact a form of coproduction of health. However, interpreted from
the perspective of social capital, Min-Iren institutions’ forays into local social milieus
resemble activities of civic organizations and foster social engagement, collective action,
and social support. In the hands of the elderly, Min-Iren medical institutions, thus,
endeavor to improve individual and neighborhood wellbeing in ways beyond medical
care. Min-Iren’s model that centers participation and local ownership is general and can
be applied to other contexts.
This chapter explores how Japanese attitudes towards death today both mirror the contemporary developed world as a whole, in the sense of death as a taboo to be hidden in hospitals, and also have their own very particular qualities, in the devotion to the departed dead apart from any belief in a monotheistic god. The chapter examines ancestor worship, beliefs in reincarnation, senses of the brevity of human life and suicide, and skepticism about any world beyond this one, as attitudes toward death in Japanese history that have extended into the present. It also looks at the growing individualization of death in Japan today, as death becomes not a matter of household ancestral worship but individual preference of funerals and also of senses of life after death, perhaps into an increasingly secular future.
This chapter discusses mortuary rituals in contemporary Japan by first describing traditional mortuary rituals (e.g., ancestor worship and family graves), in which the family plays a pivotal role in dealing with death and the afterlife. With rapid social change, the continuation of these rituals poses problems especially as a result of major changes in the family. Consequently, new or simplified forms of mortuary rituals have emerged. The chapter introduces some of these (e.g., eternally worshipped graves, scattering bones in the sea, and low‐cost funerals) and considers why people adopt them. These alternatives diversify mortuary practices and increase individual choices. They also reveal that: (1) despite changes, death and the afterlife still constitute an integral part of life and mortuary rituals remain highly significant in Japan; and (2) evolving mortuary rituals today not only reflect changes in various facets of Japanese life (e.g., family, employment, demographic trends, consumerism) but also illustrate how people respond to these changes.
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.
Inquiring into concerns surrounding death and the afterlife in an underclass enclave in Japan, this article proposes that the politics of survival involves engaging with the enduring relationship between the living and the dead, referred to as ‘necrosociality’. Based on fieldwork carried out in Yokohama, it explores how ‘isolated death’ (kodokushi) and ‘disconnected spirits’ (muenbotoke) have become major concerns in homeless activism and support, giving rise to various necrosocial innovations and practices. The emergent necrosociality in Yokohama conjures up an alternative logic of care that connects people based on the general premise of inevitable decay and decline rather than familial ties and intimate memories. This article suggests that the concept of necrosociality provides a useful framework for analysing how social relations are negotiated, reaffirmed, or negated through bodily remains and graves, effectively shaping the modes of being and care among the living.
Contemporary Japan is known both for its high tech culture and its rapidly aging population, with 22 % of people currently 65 years and older. Yet there has been little attention to the material culture of the elderly. This paper explores the way aging bodies, official ideology, and consumption of what are called "assistive devices" and "life technologies" come together in the experience of frail old people who depend not only on human caregivers but on "things" such as walkers, kidney dialysis machines, and electric massage chairs. It begins to consider the questions: What technology to aid failing bodies is available, and to whom? How does the advocacy of independence create new forms of consumption? How do "things" mediate ideological change regarding elder care and help to create new understandings of self and one's relation to others? Data come from interviews conducted in 2003-2007 as part of a study of elder care in Japan under the public long term care insurance system that began in 2000. These interviews point both to acceptance of the technology as a way to avoid over-dependence on caregivers, and to resistance to the limitations of aging and to its 21st century definition by the state.
The sociology of death, dying and bereavement tends to take as its implicit frame either the nation state or a homogenous modernity. Between-nation differences in the management of death and dying are either ignored or untheorized. This article seeks to identify the factors that can explain both similarities and differences in the management of death between different modern western nations. Structural factors which affect all modern nations include urbanization and the division of labour leading to the dominance of professionals, migration, rationality and bureaucracy, information technology and the risk society. How these sociologically familiar structural features are responded to, however, depends on national histories, institutions and cultures. Historically, key transitional periods to modernity, different in different nations, necessitated particular institutional responses in the management of dying and dead bodies. Culturally, key factors include individualism versus collectivism, religion, secularization, boundary regulation, and expressivism. Global flows of death practices depend significantly on subjugated nations' perceptions of colonialism, neo-colonialism and modernity, which can lead to a dominant power's death practices being either imitated or rejected.
In Japan, where organized religion is increasingly viewed with a critical eye, one of the country's most enduring social and religious traditions - commemorating ancestral spirits - is undergoing rapid change. The highly competitive market for household altars is the source of innovative and sometimes radical concepts that represent a paradigm shift in how families and individuals should interact with ancestral spirits. No longer catering to guidelines from mainstream Buddhist denominations about altar style and function, companies building and marketing contemporary altars (gendai butsudan) present a highly-refined product that not only harmonizes with modern interior designs but also emphasizes individual preferences and spirituality in how the altar is conceptualized and used. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper will demonstrate how some of the products, marketing strategies, and key players in this multi-billion yen industry help shape fundamental ideas of religious and ritual practice in contemporary Japanese society.
In this introduction to the ALCR thematic volume Towards an Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Life Course, the editors reflect about the challenges of life-course research, the necessity of interdisciplinarity, its difficulties, and the pathways leading to it. They stress the interest of theoretical linkages, taking sociology and social psychology as exemplary candidates, and discuss basic concepts of life course analysis, such as trajectories, stages, transitions and events. Last but not least, they present the contributions to this volume along a further dimension of interdisciplinarity, i.e., transversal themes, concretely four of them: agency and structure, transitions, biographical re-construction, and methodological innovation.
Public and professional discourses in American society about what constitutes a “good death” have flourished in recent decades, as illustrated by the pivotal SUPPORT study and the growing palliative care movement. This paper examines a distinctive medical discourse from high-technology academic medical centers through an analysis of how physicians who are specialists in internal medicine tell stories about the deaths of patients in their care. 163 physicians from two major academic medical centers in the United States completed both qualitative open interviews and quantitative attitudinal measures on a recent death and on the most emotionally powerful death they experienced in the course of their careers. A subsample of 75 physicians is the primary source for the qualitative analysis, utilizing Atlas-ti.
In this article we explore the development of group homes for elders with dementia in Japan since the inception of the long-term care insurance program in 2000. We suggest that the combination of demographic and policy trends in recent years have created a context in which entrepreneurial
activities related to elder care have increased significantly. By focusing on one of the new institutions that has emerged, we show one way in which social policy has had a significant influence on the lives of elders suffering from dementia and their families. Finally, we point out some of
the problems that have arisen along with the growth of these new forms of care, such as a lack of involvement by family members in visiting and caring for elders.
This article examines the formation and growth of the Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS), a civic group formed in 1990 to promote the scattering of human ashes in Japan. Changing family structures and a critical lack of sufficient burial space have led to a "grave revolution" since the end of the 1980s. Scattering sits at the intersection of legal battles over the ambiguous status of cremated remains, historical debates over what constitutes "traditional" funerary practices, Buddhist arguments for the necessity of posthumous ordination and memorial rites, as well as social and medical concerns over locating the dead. The "natural funerals," or shizensō, performed by the GFPS do not require a Buddhist funeral, memorial rites, posthumous name, or grave, and thus present a highly visible challenge to over 300 years of Buddhist mortuary practices and family-centered, patrilineal graves.
This article analyzes changes in norms of filial care for elderly parents and expectations of old-age support from children, based on a series of national surveys of currently married women of reproductive age in Japan. The analysis suggests that norms of filial care for elderly parents were fairly constant from 1963 until 1986, when a major weakening of norms began. The sudden normative shift after 1986 is conceptualized as a rapid diffusion process, which appears to have been triggered by government efforts to shift some of the burden of caring for the elderly back to families. In contrast to norms of care for elderly parents, expectations of old-age support from children have declined steadily over time, adapting continuously to changes in underlying socio-economic and demographic conditions. Overall, the findings suggest that government efforts to shift the burden of caring for the elderly back to families may not be successful.
This article investigates the relation of kinship to the Japanese ie (household), and proposes that 'position' (which is closely related to the enterprise and religious facets of the ie) is a more appropriate frame-of-reference than kinship. Succession is redefined via a series of recruitment stretegies, in which kinship is one possible recruitment option. The descent-system recruitments of 'primogeniture', 'marriage' and 'adoption' can also be integrated into one system, which is both simpler and better explains the ethnographic evidence. Rethinking the relation of kinship to the ie opens up a series of questions, both in the field of Japanese ethnography and in the development of theoretical perspectives for comparative 'domestic groups', based on pragmatic definitions of the system-in-practice, rather than ideal or typological models.
Relatively high prevalence of coresidence between older parents and adult children in Japan is generally interpreted as a structural manifestation of traditional family norms; however, recent socioeconomic changes in Japan have called this into question. This study analyzes national data from older people in Japan to examine the reciprocal relationship between two types of intergenerational coresidence and normative beliefs about traditional stern-family living arrangements. Two-stage least squares regression analysis reveals that coresidence with married children and traditional normative beliefs mutually reinforces each other, whereas coresidence with unmarried children strengthens normative beliefs, but not vice versa. The authors argue that the composition of multigenerational households of older people in Japan is shifting toward a type where instrumental concerns of both generations take precedence over traditional cultural ideology. Traditional norms still motivate the formation of stem-family households but are also used to justify instrumentally driven living arrangements with single children.
The recent trend in contemporary Japanese funerals reflects changing family relationships, religious affiliation and individual values. Increasingly, Japanese people are conducting a living‐funeral or a non‐religious funeral (as opposed to a common Buddhist funeral), and dispersing ashes after cremation. Such funeral ceremonies and mortuary rites demonstrate the isolation of the elderly during the process of dying, the asymmetrical relationship between the deceased and the bereaved, and the attenuating ties between people and Buddhist temples. The fundamental change that underlies these transformation of funerary practices, I argue, is the shift from the ancestor worship that values the deceased for the purpose of household perpetuation, to the memorialism of individuals that celebrates the deceased's personal life based on the bereaved's love toward the deceased.
Ancestor worship in Japan is ritual, supported by a sophisticated theory, by which the living manage their bonds with the dead. Differing cultural values on autonomy/dependence create differences in interpersonal bonds, thus different dynamics in breaking and continuing bonds after death. This article defines ancestor worship and places in its historical/political context, discusses autonomy and dependence as cultural values in terms of expressions and resolutions of grief, and describes ancestor worship as processes similar to the resolution of grief in the modern West.
In the efforts to disentangle life stage from other factors with which it is confounded, the conceptual meaning and developmental role of both history and cohort have been ignored. This paper reconsiders the nature of cohort, a conceptual formulation of it, and three problems in its application (cohort boundaries, distinctive cohort experiences, and differential cohort effects). While cohort is an index of many discrete variables that can be specified in its place, its subtler patterns are less amenable to operationalization and substitution. Hence, there are limits to the dispensability of this sensitizing concept.
This article explores the changing nature and patterns of the ‘generational contract’, with particular reference to the exchange of nursing care and housing assets between older parents and their adult children. Inheritance practices and attitudes are used to examine the ways in which socio-economic, demographic and policy changes have recently altered the conventional arrangements in Japanese society. The previously defined ‘generational contract’ is now ambiguous, and the expectations and obligations of different family members are fragmented. This article also discusses whether such practices in Japan are unique and the ways in which they differ from the English situation. Family obligations and inheritance have been more explicitly connected in the Japanese social and legal systems, while in England there is neither legal obligation to support older parents nor any constraint on inheritance. This article elucidates the similarities and differences in the patterns of inheritance and thus the exchange models between care and inheritance in the two societies.
Analyses of kinship terminology and of descent and residential rules have dominated the study of the Japanese family and kinship organization. However, the positional terminological system is found to be sociocentric in nature. It is argued that succession and inheritance rules provide a more useful approach to the structural study of the sociocentric stem family in Japan.
Several body theorists focus on the precultural materiality of the body as flesh to argue against the discursively constructed, supposedly fleshless or imagined bodies of postmodernity. This article is about body perceptions of 24 people sharing an exceptionally fleshly and seemingly imagined experience: their determination to donate their organs or bodies after their death. Approaching prospective donation as a culturally elaborated, somatic, intersubjective practice, I argue, first, that flesh in itself does not guarantee the material immediacy of one's self presence. Second, that the imaginary body as flesh may be as much painfully or pleasantly experienced as the non-imaginary one.
In the northern Japanese memorial practice of “bride-doll marriage/” which emerged during World War II, the soul of a dead child is married to a spirit spouse embodied in a consecrated figurine. These marriages stimulate limited exchange relationships between the living and dead by building on old and new modes of gifting and circulation, including the prestation of Bodhisattva statues, affinity, transmigration, and the abstraction of social relations made possible by modern commodity forms. Motivated by a strong sense of unfulfilled obligation toward the deceased, these restricted acts of exchange culminate in the cessation of exchange transactions between the living and specific dead persons. In this respect, spirit marriage is profoundly unlike conventional marriage among the living, which leads to ramifying exchange relations between a growing number of persons over time. [Japan, memorialization, mortuary ritual, commodities, Buddhism]
This exploratory study examines home caregiving of elderly family members in rural central Japan. The extent of the daughter-in-law''s involvement with severely cognitively and physically impaired relatives is discussed within the context of traditional co-residence patterns. Findings from a preliminary survey, interviews and observations indicate limited modification of the physical environment, high levels of burden, and utilization of the limited respite services available. Despite expectations that daughters-in-law will care for the elderly, voices for change are growing louder.
Reviewed are research findings related to Japanese attitudes toward the elderly. Although several studies approaching this theme have been published in Japan since 1952, most of them are not known outside Japan because they were written in Japanese. These studies explored the presence of negative attitudes which were usually masked with rituals of respect for the elderly. People's proper use of tatemae, culturally defined normative meaning, and honne, actual feeling, in their attitudes toward the elderly is discussed as a potential source of the American idealization of aging in Japan.
This article critically examines the literature on modernization and the status of the elderly in Japan. Based on a review of recent social gerontology studies in Japan, an evaluation is made of recent changes in the structure of Japanese families, attitudes of both the aged and nonaged to living in three generation families, and the impact living in a three generational family has on the image of the elderly among the younger generation. This review challenges a commonly stated thesis in the literature that due to the existence of unique cultural norms, the elderly in Japan have been able to maintain a higher level of social status and integration than their Western counterparts. It concludes with some cautionary comments on evaluating the social role of traditional family structures in rapidly changing societies.
Using data from the 1988 Mainichi Newspapers/Nihon University National Family Survey, we analyzed the living arrangements
and attitudes toward inheritance of Japanese aged 60 and over. Logit analysis indicates that living arrangements are influenced
by gender, age, marital status, education, urban residence, and number of living children. Log-linear modeling of inheritance
attitudes shows that living with married children, lower educational attainment, and living in a traditionally agricultural
area are associated with favoring bequests to eldest sons, as opposed to bequests to all children equally or to whoever takes
care of the elderly person. The results are consistent with modernization theory of gerontology and convergence theory of
family sociology in that elderly persons with more “modern” characteristics are more likely to depart from prewar ideals of
living with married children and preferring bequests to eldest sons only
This paper inquires into a "peculiar' form of Japanese intimacy - one that is manifested in a distinctive pattern of social interaction and which in turn is believed to be a retention of a mode of interaction between parent and child. This pattern is comprised of two complementary postures that prescribe, respectively, an individual to indulge himself in love (amaeru) or to defer in love (amayakasu). By "stepping in and out' of these bipolar postures, the Japanese individual is given the opportunity for self-assertion (the aggressive pole) on the one hand, and of altruistic self-withdrawal (the passive pole) on the other. This pattern of interchangeable posture is subsequently inferred to extend beyond intimacy and into formal interactions via tanomu ("ritualized indulgence') and enryo ("exaggerated deference'). This study concludes with the suggestion that since amae is demonstrated to be an empirical presence influencing Japanese basic social perception and behavior, its bipolar posturing might be employed as a distinctive variable in clarifying some paradoxical aspects of Japanese culture and people.
An area that has been ignored in the discussions of elder care in Japan is the role of men. This exploratory study is one of the first to examine the role of men in the day-to-day care of an older family member. For this qualitative study, 16 husbands and sons were interviewed to examine the extent of their involvement in caregiving. The research examined five areas: motivation, tasks, impact on work/family lives, community reaction, and meaning. Sons' motivations went beyond filial piety, to one of love and/or an opportunity to pay back a devoted parent; they experienced greater role conflict and used more formal services than husbands. Husbands evolved a spousal obligation to care for their wives, provided more hands-on care, and exhibited greater caregiver stress. Both sons and husbands gained insights from the caregiving role, which was undertaken with little societal recognition or understanding.