WHEN SōGEN KATO turned 111 years old in 2010, he became the oldest man in Tokyo. Officials came to his house to congratulate Kato on this impressive milestone. Kato’s daughter would not let them in, alternately claiming that Kato was in a persistent vegetative state or that he was attempting to practice sokushinbutsu, the ancient art of self-mummification of Buddhist monks.
After repeated attempts, the police forcibly entered the home and found Kato’s body, which had been dead for at least thirty years and was long since mummified (but still wearing his underwear). Instead of honoring her father and bringing him to the grave, Mr. Kato’s daughter had locked his body in a room on the first floor of the family home. His granddaughter was quoted as saying, “My mother said, ‘Leave him in there,’ and he was left as he was.” Over the years his eighty-one-year-old daughter pocketed over $100,000 of his pension payments.
What Kato-san’s family did was astounding, not only for the length of their scam but because it demonstrated how much the Japanese view of the dead body had changed. Traditionally, the corpse was seen as impure. Since the body was polluted, the family was expected to be active in performing rituals to purify and reset the body to a more benign and nonthreatening state—imiake, or “lifting of pollution.”
To someone alive today, the list of rituals once performed to decontaminate both the living and the dead might seem endless. A list of highlights: drink sake before and after any contact with the body; light incense and candles so that the fire can cast out contamination; stay awake with the body all night, so no malevolent spirits enter the corpse; scrub your hands with salt after a cremation.
By the mid-twentieth century more people began to die in hospitals, away from the home. More professionals in charge meant the Japanese lost the sense that the dead body was impure. Cremation rose from 25 percent (at the turn of the century) to almost 100 percent. People felt contamination could be avoided by sending the corpse into the flames. The same shift occurred in the United States, but had the opposite result. It is disheartening that in the U.S., the professionalization of deathcare led to a greater fear of the body than ever before. Again, a gaze through the looking glass.
In Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city, you’ll find Lastel, a portmanteau of Last + Hotel, as in, the last hotel you’ll ever stay in . . . because you’re dead. It’s a hotel for corpses. The manager of Lastel, Mr. Tsuruo, didn’t lead us through cobwebs by candlelight, as you might expect the proprietor of a corpse hotel to do. He was funny and outgoing, passionate about the facility and what it provides. By the end of my visit, I was whispering into my audio recorder, “I want it I want a corpse hotel I want one.”
Mr. Tsuruo led us into the elevator. “This elevator is not for the public, of course,” he apologized. “Just for the stretcher and the workers.” The elevator looked so clean you could eat off the floor. We exited on the sixth floor, where Lastel had a refrigerated storage room that held up to twenty dead bodies.
“I wanted something here that other facilities don’t have,” Mr. Tsuruo explained, as an electric stretcher shot down a metal track, floated underneath a white casket, lifted the casket from the rack, and delivered it to us at the entrance.
The walls were lined with casket-sized metal doors. “Where do they lead?” I asked.
Mr. Tsuruo motioned us to follow. We entered a small room with incense, some couches. There was an identical set of small metal doors in this room, though they were better-disguised. A door opened, and in slid the white casket.
We continued into three different family rooms, where if you are a relative, you can come at any time of the day (the body is there, on average, for about four days) and call up the body from refrigerated storage. Your family member will be in the casket, their features lightly put into place (with no embalming) and dressed in a Buddhist costume or a more modern suit. “Maybe you can’t make the funeral,” Mr. Tsuruo said, “maybe you’re working during the day, so you come by to visit and sit with the body.”
One of the family rooms was larger, with big comfy couches, a television, and copious bouquets of flowers. It was a place to hang out with the dead, in comfort, with none of the strict time limits imposed by an American funeral home.
“It is 10,000 yen ($85) more to use this big room,” he said.
“Worth it!” I replied.
To have that period to visit the body as often as you like, no reservations needed, seemed graceful and civilized. Antithetical to the “you paid for two hours in the viewing room and you’ll get two hours in the viewing room” rules of a Western funeral home.
On another of Lastel’s nine floors was a bathing room, bright clean and white. There was a tall, elegant washing station for “the last bath on this Earth.” The traditional yukan bathing ceremony has, in recent years, been revived and performed commercially for close family members. The president of one company reintroducing the service said, “The bathing ceremony should [help] fill the psychological void in contemporary funeral ceremonies,” because quickly taking the body away “does not offer sufficient time for the bereaved to contemplate death.”
In my practice as a mortician I’ve found that both cleaning the body and spending time with it serves a powerful role in processing grief. It helps mourners see the corpse not as a cursed object, but as a beautiful vessel that once held their loved one. Famed Japanese home organizer Marie Kondo expresses a similar idea in her mega-bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Instead of purging everything into a garbage bag, she suggests you spend time with each item and “thank it for its service” before letting it go. Some critics found it silly to thank an ill-fitting sweater for its service, but the impulse actually comes from a profound place. Each separation is a small death, and should be honored. This concept is reflected in the Japanese relationship with the dead body. You don’t just let Mother disappear into the cremation machine; you sit with her, and thank her body—and her—for her service as your mother. Only then do you let her go.
Mr. Tsuruo continued our tour by walking us down a cobblestone street, in actuality just a hallway in the Lastel building. The vibe was Victorian-themed Christmas display at the local shopping center. At the end of the hall was the front door of the “house.” Mr. Tsuruo offered us tiny covers to put over our shoes.
“This is the ‘living room type’ family funeral,” he said, opening the door into a normal Japanese condominium (sadly not Victorian-themed like the hallway).
“So this is just someone’s condo? But no one actually stays here?” I asked, confused.