In the past, if you talked about funerals, people would look at you with disgust and say, “That’s bad luck.” But times seem to have changed. Talking about funerals has become a happy topic. More than 1.3 million Japanese people die every year. In 2023, that number will exceed 1.56 million. Even though the elderly people around them die, they seem to feel happy to be alive and be able to talk about funerals. There seems to be joy in being able to decide on a funeral while their mind and body are still healthy. The joy in talking about funerals seems to be that they have time to be safe and have time to think. In this article, I thought about the state of funerals and the future outlook on life and death.
In modern times, when someone dies, they are generally cremated, placed in an urn, and buried in a grave. This cremation itself was practiced early on by people who came from the Korean Peninsula in groups around the 4th to 7th centuries. However, this cremation was something that only wealthy people could afford. The prototype of modern Buddhist funerals is the Zen Buddhist funeral style. The prototype of the funeral arose in the Kamakura period (1180-1336), and the Zen sect, which had a great influence in the Muromachi period (1336-1573), developed the style. There were two funeral styles in Zen Buddhism. One was for monks who had become monks. The other was for people who died in the middle of their training. The training style was combined with the Nembutsu of Pure Land Buddhism, and has led to the general funeral style for lay people.
There are various funeral styles in world religions as well. In Hinduism in India, there is a strong belief that sins can be cleansed by bathing in the holy water of the Ganges River, which emanates from the heavens. It is said that if the ashes of a deceased are scattered in the Ganges after death, the soul will go to heaven. In Christianity, many people want to be buried because of the religious idea of resurrection. In 1963, the Vatican declared that cremation does not impede resurrection. However, it seems that burial customs cannot be changed overnight. If you look at the country’s cemeteries, you will see neatly arranged cross-shaped gravestones. The remains in these communal cemeteries are reburied in ossuaries every 10 years. In Italy, the remains are exhumed after 10 years and reburied in a smaller coffin. Another coffin is placed in the original grave after 10 years, and a system is in place to recycle the graveyard. Care is taken to prevent the graveyard from continuing to increase in number. If you look at funeral rites around the world, you will see that there are many different ideas and patterns of behavior. It seems that there are signs of change and problems in these funeral rites as well.
