A Japanese funeral

My father-in-law died some years back; not unexpectedly, as he had lived a bachelor life for his final twenty years on a strict diet of meat, booze and nicotine, but unwelcome nonetheless. My wife being an only child, she and I automatically became the Chief Mourners.

The relatives assembled. He died in hospital; no fuss, no pain, the numbers just got smaller and off he went. There was a small amount of dignified sniffling from one or two ladies, but nothing unseemly. There was, however, work to do. First things first: the hospital recommended a funeral company, whose unctuous representative turned up suspiciously quickly. It being thought tasteless to discuss such matters at such a time, we were not informed exactly how much everything would cost, but the best possible service was assured.

The body was suitably dolled up and delivered to the house, where we were busy laying on the beer and peanuts for the wake. A special bed was laid out for the occasion, and a rented futon of spectacular gaudiness covered all but his head, which was frozen with dry ice to keep him fresh and perky.

My father-in-law had a simple rule in his house: if he could remember a particular object being new, then it was technically still new and thus did not need cleaning. He had a very long memory. His predilection for fried food, coupled with a cigarette habit which must have earned him Christmas cards from Japan Tobacco Inc., and latterly the presence of an incontinent dog (a large, mad Siberian Husky puppy whose testicles were connected to the centre of its brain with a very thick cable, and who celebrated the announcement of walkies each day by pissing with joy in random directions) had lent the place a certain atmosphere. He ran his own business for years, not that he ever got rich, and as owner of a shop was the target for profligate gift-giving. He attended the weddings and funerals of all his employees, their friends and relatives, and, if the captions on the gift wrappers were any guide, a number of total strangers, returning from each laden down with further gifts. Ties, tea sets, coffee makers, towels – millions of towels – luggage, commemorative books and slews of electrical doodads – all went unopened into the numerous wardrobes upstairs that divorce had handily vacated. When they realized this stuff was never to be looked at again, the hordes of mice who lived in the walls and ceilings phoned their relatives to come on over for a gnaw-in. By the time he died and the place had to be tarted up in a hurry for the wake, things had got to the stage where you didn’t dare lean on any surface lest warm water and spoon handles be required to separate you again. We cranked up the incense a bit to mask the fragrance of the dog, and spent an afternoon scraping the stalactites of congealed fat off the kitchen ceiling. We needn’t have bothered, it turned out, at least as far as his surviving brother was concerned, as his first comment on arrival was how clean the place was compared to his own.

The priest arrived. This was the neighborhood man, who rolled up on his ladies’ bicycle (Buddhist priests start out on bicycles and graduate to large motor scooters, which they ride in a manner that suggests they’ve already checked and confirmed that they qualify for heaven). He hummed and hawed a bit at the body in its casket, then set out a bit more incense and began the droning. The liturgy of Japanese Buddhism in most of its various flavors relies heavily on droning for effect. Reading from a little book of scripture, the priest chants in measured phrases at a sprightly pace, each lungful delivered in a sonorous monotone punctuated at the end by a cheeky little lift. Every ten phrases or so, he reaches out one gorgeously clad sleeve and pings a little bell. It used to go on for hours, but nowadays the TV generation likes things a bit snappier, so ten or fifteen minutes is about the limit, after which he cleared off for the night.

You’re supposed to sit up the whole night, but few do any more. After some fairly cheerful drinking and gossiping around the body, everyone shoved off and we bedded down, leaving a candle burning downstairs in case the departed came back to life and wanted to go for a pee.

Come the morning and all was business. The funeral company man turned up bright and early to top up the dry ice and take some details for the shindig itself. A photograph had to be found for display at the service, and I insisted on one in which he looked at least amiable. (Finding one was no simple task, as there seems to be some unwritten Japanese law that when a picture is taken, all men present must scowl like demons. In the picture taken at a formal dinner to mark our wedding, more or less the whole family is there. My leg was in plaster at the time, so I couldn’t obey the photographer’s injunctions concerning the exact correct seating position – buttocks clenched, knees welded together and tight fists poised on the thighs – and to everyone’s dismay both my wife-to-be and I seemed to think it appropriate to smile. In the resulting picture we thus stand out a bit; two cheerful young souls surrounded by three rows of gargoyles apparently in various stages of chagrin, rage and constipation).

Various relatives drifted in and sat around making odd comments about nothing until the time came to load him up and take him down to the temple. He couldn’t just go as he was, though. First he had to be dressed – selected relatives getting to put socks on his feet – and placed in the coffin, again by various guests. Certain objects were then put in there with him to jolly up the interior; a photograph or two of happier times, a car brochure (this from the son of a distant relative who remembered how much my father-in-law liked cars) and his golf gloves. The funeral company man reminded us that certain objects could sadly not be consigned with the deceased, including live ammunition, spray cans or explosives of any kind. I’d give a lot to hear how they came to have to issue that particular warning.

The job of Master of Ceremonies was then handed back to the priest, who called each first-degree mourner up to administer final refreshment in the form of water dripped from a green leaf onto the frozen lips of the corpse. Things were getting a bit odd for my taste by this time, and I was doing my best to stay out of it. The coffin was then lined by everyone with flowers laid on for the purpose (‘Use lots of flowers! We have plenty!’ beamed the funeral company man) and the lid was shut, a little window over his face preserving the opportunity for last glimpses for anyone who turned up late.

At the temple we all milled around outside a bit, with the men smoking furiously in anticipation of the coming ordeal (thirty minutes of abstention). Inside a room next door to the temple itself, the funeral company had set up a large carved wooden altar at the far end, in the middle of which the coffin was stashed under a field of carefully-priced (and, it turned out, mostly plastic) flowers. Wreaths bearing the names of the mourning households were hung from the walls - carefully spaced to maximize the effect, as there weren’t many - and one or two sallow youths in black tuxedos acted as ushers. When everyone had shuffled in and sat down there was another half-hour drone-a-thon from the priest while each mourner in turn (and in order of seniority, us first) shuffled up to burn some incense. At the top of the altar was a hastily printed enlargement of my father-in-law’s picture, and below it a wooden tablet on which was inscribed his new name. His new name? When you die, in this particular version of Japanese Buddhism, you must receive a new name. This is for use in heaven. Heaven? There’s a heaven in Buddhism? New one on me, too. Turns out there is, at least in Japan. They’re a bit vague about it, referring to ‘this world’ and ‘that world’, but it seems that there definitely is another place, and it’s a bit classy so your own name won’t do at all. 

As your new name has to serve you for eternity, it follows that it ought to be a good one. The priest, who for some reason knows which names are best, will be happy to sit down and think of a really nice one for your treasured relative. For a price. Now, as we all know, certain Chinese characters have particularly auspicious meanings. If you’d like the dear departed’s new name to feature one or more of these special ones, it can perhaps be done. At a larger price. (My wife’s uncle Yasumasa was a bit of a rogue, with a taste for the good life, so when he died his new name was a real beauty. It cost the best part of a million yen, or five thousand pounds at the time. I hope he enjoys using it, though knowing him as we did it seems unlikely he’s anywhere within telephoning distance of heaven. When his creditors subsequently began to emerge and claim his entire estate it turned out he owned nothing at all. I suppose whoever is in charge in ‘that world’ must by now have sent the lads round to reclaim the name after the check bounced).

With the service over, it was into the cars and off to the crematorium. This turned out to be a squat, concrete block in the middle of the tomb yard of another temple some way off. We stood around in the bleak little building while the stove was cranked up and all was readied. As the coffin was trundled into the flames the priest, rather unnecessarily I thought, reminded us that this was the last time we’d see the departed. Alas, this turned out not to be true. After some time and one or two peeks into the sight glass by the bored-looking crematorium operators, the slab was pulled out again. Steaming away, there lay a toasted but reasonably complete skeleton. The mourners all crowded round to get a good view. “Ah yes,” said the priest, pointing, “the skull has exploded. That normally happens.” Everyone nodded and frowned in concentration as he picked up a large pair of chopsticks and started to poke about among the fragments, commenting on the discoloration of the cancerous bones. “Here it is” he announced finally, and propped up one of the bones for all to see (one of the uppermost vertebrae, I think). He tapped it with a chopstick. “You can see quite clearly the figure of the seated Buddha. This is an unusually well-defined one”.

This was getting a bit too much like Voodoo for a nice boy like me, so I left them to it (everyone took turns, I later learned, to load the bones into an urn with the chopsticks).

Outside in the sunshine, my father-in-law’s older brother was perched on a tomb like a little gnome, merrily puffing away on his 379^th cigarette of the day.

“Not going in, then?” I asked.

“You won’t catch me in a place like that,” he grinned. “Depresses me something terrible.”

I pointed to his gasper.

“They won’t let you smoke in there, either, eh?”

“I’ll tell you something.” He pointed a bony finger at the still-smoking chimney. “People say he died because he smoked and that’s why he got lung cancer, but that’s a load of rubbish. People who are going to get cancer are going to get it, no matter what they do. I’ve smoked seventy a day since I was fifteen and I’m fine. Doctors say they can’t find a thing wrong with me, and I’m eighty-five. He was going to get cancer anyway. Not suprising he died.”

Errr…alright then. I felt it better to change the subject, and figuring I had nothing to lose asked a question few Japanese would dare to.

“What did you do in the war?”

He beamed. “Me? I was in China. It was excellent. I was buying horses for the Imperial Army. I’d go and buy horses off the Chinks for a few sen each and sell them on to cavalry officers. Time of my life. You could get women for almost nothing – the army laid them on for the troops. Lots of food and tobacco, too, right up to the end. We had a fine old time.”

I confess I was beginning to like him. With my interest in the war and his apparent willingness to talk about it I could have stayed and chatted all day but frantic flippering from the doorway of the crematorium suggested my presence was required. The last bits and pieces had all been swept up with a brush and pan, and a final drone had accompanied the sealing of the urn, so this bit was finished. We all piled into the cars again and tooled round to yet another temple where my father-in-law’s bones were poured into the base of the family tomb to join those of various ancestors. Then it was back to the room with the altar for a feast and extensive drinking, while his digitally retouched photo gazed down on us from the top of the flower-bedecked edifice.

Well, the long day drew to an end and that was that. Or was it?

“We were lucky,” my missus told me, “the priest agreed to combine the seventh-day memorial service with the funeral so we don’t have to do it next week. There’s nothing now until the 49^th day.”

Sure enough, one month and nineteen days later everyone reassembled at the temple and a drone was performed. The priest, who had some time to waste before his next appointment, then treated us to a rambling sermon which started out as an advertisement for his particular sect (“Some other sects I could mention believe in more frequent memorial services, but we are progressive and don’t think any more than this is necessary”) but went on to cover various themes such as the recent poison gas attack in the Tokyo subway (“In times like these, where such terrible things are happening all around us, it is reassuring to know” etc.) and ended up with a thrilling update on the state of his lumbago (“Riding a bicycle, as I do is, I think, the best way to get around but my lower back hurts dreadfully sometimes.”)

“Remind me,” I asked my wife as we tucked into yet another communal lunch, “what’s the point here?”

“The departed soul hasn’t actually departed. It’s still present. We have just prayed for it to leave and go to the other world.”

“Why didn’t he bugger off after the funeral?”
“He needed to see that we are alright and that we are doing everything properly.”

“Right…so that’s it, then?”

“Until next year.”

Sure enough, one year later we did it all again. And again a year after that. When the seventh anniversary comes around, we’re supposed to have another shindig, and if we’re really devout it should go on at gradually expanding intervals until, wait for it, forty-nine years after my father-in-law died. I will be 85 by then, and what with one thing and another I haven’t booked the hall yet.