With an aging population, declining marriage and childbirth rates, and a rise in single households, more Japanese are living and dying alone. Many dead are no longer buried in traditional ancestral graves where their descendants would tend their spirits and individuals are increasingly taking on mor...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Allison, Anne (Author)
Format:	Electronic eBook
Language:	English
Published:	Durham Duke University Press [2023]
Subjects:	SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social Death care industry > Japan Death > Social aspects > Japan Funeral rites and ceremonies > Japan
Online Access:	DE-12 URL des Erstveröffentlichers
Summary:	With an aging population, declining marriage and childbirth rates, and a rise in single households, more Japanese are living and dying alone. Many dead are no longer buried in traditional ancestral graves where their descendants would tend their spirits and individuals are increasingly taking on mortuary preparation for themselves. In Being Dead Otherwise Anne Allison examines the emergence of new death practices in Japan as the old customs of mortuary care are coming undone. She outlines the new proliferation of industries, services, initiatives, and businesses that offer alternative means for tending to the dead, ranging from automated graves, collective gravesites, and crematoria to one-stop mortuary complexes and robot priests. These new burial and ritual practices provide alternatives to the long-standing traditions of burial and commemoration of the dead. In charting this shifting ecology of death, Allison outlines the potential of these solutions to radically reorient sociality in Japan in ways that will impact how we think about death, identity, tradition, and culture in Japan and beyond
Item Description:	Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mai 2023)
Physical Description:	1 Online-Ressource (256 pages)
ISBN:	9781478024415
DOI:	10.1515/9781478024415