Japanese funeral
The majority of funerals in Japan include a wake, the cremation of the deceased, a burial in a family grave, and a periodic memorial service. According to 2007 statistics, 99.81% of deceased Japanese are cremated.
Other practices in Japan include Shinto funerals and the Ryukyuan people’s indigenous sepultural culture.
Modern funerals
After death
Although Japan has become a more secular society, as of 2007, 90% of funerals are conducted as Buddhist ceremonies. Immediately after a death, relatives moisten the dying or deceased person's lips with water, a practice known as water of the last moment. Most Japanese homes keep Buddhist altars or butsudan, for use in Buddhist ceremonies; many also have Shinto shrines, or kamidana. When a death occurs, the shrine is closed and covered with white paper to keep out the impure spirits of the dead, a custom called kamidana-fūji. A small table set with flowers, incense, and a candle is placed next to the deceased's bed.Relatives and authorities are then informed, and a death certificate is issued. Funeral arrangements are made typically by the eldest son, beginning with contacting a temple to schedule the event. Some days are more auspicious than others, based on an old Chinese six-day lunar cycle; in particular, the second day, called tomobiki, is superstitiously understood to mean "pulling your friends along with you" and is therefore considered a very bad day for a funeral but an auspicious one for a wedding.
The body is washed and its orifices are blocked with cotton or gauze. An "encoffining" ritual is sometimes performed, in which professional nōkansha ritually dress and prepare the body then place it in the coffin, as portrayed in the 2008 film Departures. The ceremony is now rarely performed, and may be limited to rural areas where older traditions are maintained. Whether or not the encoffining is performed, a deceased female is dressed in a white kimono, and a deceased male is dressed in a suit or a kimono. Makeup may be also applied. The body is put on dry ice in a casket. Items–such as a white kimono, a white triangular headband called a tenkan, a pair of sandals, six coins for crossing the River of Three Crossings, and burnable things the deceased was fond of –are placed in the casket, which is then placed on an altar for the wake. The body is positioned with the head towards the north or, as a second choice, the west. In Buddhism, this western orientation reflects the western location of Sukhāvatī, the Pure Land of Amida Buddha.
During life, both men and women cross the front of a kimono or yukata with the left side over the right. When a corpse is clothed in a traditional kimono, the kimono is crossed right over left.
Wake
Held as soon as possible after death, a Japanese wake is called tsuya, lit. "passing the night". All funeral guests wear black: men wear black suits with white shirts and black ties, and women wear either black dresses or black kimono. If the deceased was an adherent of Buddhism, a set of prayer beads called juzu may be carried by the guests. People attending the wake or funeral offer condolence money to the host/hostess, in special black-and-silver envelopes. Depending on the relationship to the deceased and the wealth of the guest, the given amount may range between 3,000 and 30,000 yen. The guests are seated, with immediate relatives seated closest to the front. The Buddhist priest then chants a section from a sutra. The family members will each offer incense three times at the incense urn placed in front of the deceased. At the same time, assembled guests will perform the same ritual at another station behind the family members' seats. The wake ends once the priest has completed reciting the sutra. Each departing guest is given a gift, valued at about half or one-fourth the condolence money received from the same guest. The closest relatives may also stay and keep vigil with the deceased overnight in the same room.Funeral
The funeral proper, called kokubetsu-shiki, is usually on the day after the wake. The procedure is similar to the wake, and incense is again offered while a priest chants a sutra. The ceremony differs slightly as the deceased receives a new Buddhist name written in kanji. This name is said to prevent the return of the deceased if their name is called. The length of the name depends also on either the virtue of the person's lifespan, or more commonly, the size of the bereaved’s donation to the temple, which result in names ranging from the generally common to the most elaborate costing 1 million yen or more. The high prices charged by temples for kaimyō are a controversial issue in Japan, especially since some temples put pressure on families to buy a more expensive name. The kanji for these kaimyō are usually very ancient, and sometimes bear esoteric meanings.At the end of the funeral ceremony, guests and family may place flowers around the deceased's head and shoulders before the casket is sealed and borne to an elaborate hearse for transport to the crematorium. In some regions of Japan, the coffin is nailed shut by mourners using a stone.
Cremation
The coffin is placed on a tray in the crematorium, and the family witnesses the corpse slide into the cremation chamber. A cremation usually takes about two hours, and the family returns at a scheduled time when cremation has been completed.Relatives then pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to an urn using large chopsticks or metal chopsticks, with two relatives holding the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks. A variant is passing the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks. Known as, this is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks. At all other times, holding anything with chopsticks by two people at the same time, or passing an item from chopsticks to chopsticks, is considered to be a major social faux pas as this will remind others of a funeral. The bones of the feet are picked up first, while the bones of the head are picked up last. This is to ensure that the deceased is not upside down in the urn. The is a bone located in the neck, specifically the second cervical vertebra, and is the most significant bone to be placed in the urn. The word nodobotoke in a living person, however, refers to the visible Adam's apple, which is a different feature.
In some cases, the ashes may be divided among more than one urn. For example, some ashes go to a family grave, and some go to the temple, a company grave, or to a space burial. Depending on local custom, the urn may stay at the family home for a period or may be directly taken to the graveyard.
In the Ryukyu Islands, traditional burial was somewhat different from that in the mainland Japan. Instead of cremation, the body would be temporarily interred in the family tomb ; after a few years, once the flesh had decomposed, the bones would be washed and put into the funerary urn, to be permanently stored elsewhere in the tomb.
Grave
A typical Japanese grave is usually a family grave consisting of a stone monument, with a place for flowers, incense, and water in front of the monument and a chamber or crypt underneath for the ashes.The date of the erection of the grave and the name of the person who purchased it may be engraved on the side of the monument. The names of the deceased are often but not always engraved on the front of the monument. When a married person dies before his or her spouse, the name of the spouse may also be engraved on the stone, with the letters painted red. After the death and the burial of the spouse, the red ink is removed from the stone. This is usually done for financial reasons, as it is cheaper to engrave two names at the same time than to engrave the second name when the second spouse dies. It can also be seen as a sign that they are waiting to follow their spouse into the grave. However, this practice is less frequent nowadays. The names of the deceased may also be engraved on the left side, or on a separate stone in front of the grave. Often, the name is also written on a sotōba, a separate wooden board on a stand behind or next to the grave. These sotōba may be erected shortly after death, and new ones may be added at certain memorial services.
Some graves may also have a box for business cards, where friends and relatives visiting the grave can drop their business card, informing the caretakers of the grave of the respects the visitors have paid to the deceased.
The high prices of funeral plots, costing on average 2 million yen, have led to a new service of Grave Apartments, where a locker-sized grave can be purchased for about 400,000 yen. Some of these may even include a touch screen showing a picture of the deceased, messages, a family tree, and other information. Due to the cost of land, a graveyard in Tokyo has recently been opened by a temple in floors 3 to 8 of a nine-story building, where the lower floors are for funeral ceremonies.
There are a number of cases where the ashes of deceased persons have been stolen from graves. The ashes of famous cartoonist Machiko Hasegawa and of the wife of real estate chairman Takichi Hayasaka were stolen for ransom. The ashes of famous novelist Yukio Mishima were stolen in 1971 and the ashes of novelist Naoya Shiga were stolen in 1980. The ashes of the wife of the baseball player Sadaharu Oh went missing in December 2002.
Mourning and memorial services
Memorial services depend on local customs. Usually, there are a number of memorial services following the death - for example, daily for the first seven days, or a number of services within the first 49 days, or on the 7th, 49th and 100th day, depending on the local custom. Most commonly observed are the Buddhist service on the seventh day after death, shonanoka, and the 49th day, shijūkunichi. In many traditions, the urn containing the ashes is interred in a ceremony called nōkotsu on the 49th day, and the family stays in mourning until this.After that, there is a memorial service on the Obon festival in honor of the dead. The festival may be held in the 1st year, sometimes in the 3rd and 5th, 7th and 13th years, and a number of times afterwards up to either the 39th or the 50th year. One popular sequence follows the days of the Thirteen Buddhas.
A picture of the deceased is also placed at or near the family altar in the household. Also, in the first year after death, no traditional New Year's Day Postcard is sent or received. The friends and relatives have to be informed of this beforehand so as not to send a card.