Inside the pods, behind the glass, stood traditional granite gravestones. Each stone had a rectangular hole at the base, the size of a textbook. Fresh flowers sat in a vase, and incense waited to be lit. The manager took out a touch card similar to the one used at the Ruriden columbarium. Simulating what a family member would do, he touched the card to an electronic keypad. “The Sakura card recognizes the urn,” he explained. Glass doors slid shut, hiding the gravestone.
Behind the scenes, magic was happening. I heard the dull whir of the robot’s arm as it plucked our urn from among 4,700 others. After about a minute the glass doors opened to reveal the gravestone. The rectangular hole now contained the urn, with a family symbol and name personalized on the front. “The idea is that many people can use the facility. We can store as many as possible,” the manager explained. The facility can accommodate 7,200 urns, and it is already more than half full. “If you have your own grave, at your own family cemetery you have to change the flowers, light the incense. It’s a lot of work. Here we do that all for you.”
Of course, for the griever truly on the go, there is now an online service that allows for virtual grave visits. Another Tokyo company, I-Can Corp., presents a Sims-like experience in which your ancestor’s virtual gravestone appears on screen in a green field. The user can, according to taste, light a virtual incense stick, place flowers, sprinkle water on the stone, and leave fruit and glasses of beer.
The president of I-Can Corp. acknowledged that “certainly, it is best to pay ancestors an actual visit.” But, “our service is for those who believe that it is possible to pay their respects in front of a computer screen.”
The head monk at Daitokuin Ryōgoku Ryoen, Masuda jūshoku, seemed permanently relaxed, and like Yajima jūshoku, had no problems with Buddhism mixing old and new ideas. (As we left he cycled away on his bike, in full robes, talking on his cellphone). The facility was a partner project between his temple and Nichiryoku Co. Years of planning went into the high-rise cemetery, which opened to the public in 2013.
“Well, you’ve seen the facility, what do you think of it?” he asked wryly.
“It’s more technology-based than any cemetery we have in the United States,” I replied. “And everything is so clean here, from the cemeteries to the cremation machines. Everything is cleaner, and much less industrial.”
“Well, dealing with death has become cleaner,” he acknowledged. “People used to fear the dead body, but we’ve made it clean. And then the cemeteries became like a park, neat and clean.”
Masuda indulged me in a long conversation about cremation trends in both Japan and America. We discussed how the Japanese were moving away from the kotsuage, in which the family personally removes the bones, preferring instead to have the facility’s employees grind the bones down and scatter them. “Traditionally, Japanese people are concerned with the skeleton,” he explained. “They perform the kotsuage, as you know. They like the bones, they don’t want ash.”
“Then what has changed?” I asked.
“There are feelings that come with the bones, responsibility for the soul. Bones are real,” Masuda said. “The people who scatter the ash are trying to forget. Trying to put aside the things they don’t want to think about.”
“Do you think that’s a good thing?” I asked.
“I don’t think it’s a good thing. You can try to make death cleaner, but especially after the big earthquake, and with the suicide rate being very high, death has come closer. There are people who take their lives before the age of ten. People are beginning to think about death. You can’t ignore it anymore.”
THERE WAS a time when the Japanese feared the corpse as unclean and impure. They have largely overcome that fear and have begun to see the body in the casket not for what it was, but for who it belonged to—not a cursed object, but a beloved grandpa. The Japanese make an effort to integrate rituals with the body, and ensure the family has enough time to spend in its presence. Meanwhile, countries like the U.S. have done the reverse. Once we cared for our corpses at home. Before the rise of the professional death class we did not have the fear the Japanese had of the dead, and we valued the presence of the corpse. But in recent years we have been taught to see the dead as unclean and impure, and fear of the physical dead body has risen, along with our direct cremation rate.
What’s more, and what sets them apart, is that the Japanese have not been afraid to integrate technology and innovation in their funerals and memorials. We don’t have a single space like Ruriden with its glowing Buddhas or Daitokuin Ryōgoku Ryoen with its robot retrieval system. Our funeral homes are considered high-tech if they offer online obituaries or a photo slideshow during the funeral.
If anything, the Japanese funeral market can prove to Western countries that you don’t have to choose between technology and interaction with the dead body. Even better, you can offer both options to clients at your funeral home and not destroy your bottom line. And yes, more than ever, I want a corpse hotel.
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* Not the rolling fog eighties music video type.
** Yes, it’s her.
BOLIVIA
LA PAZ
Paul Koudounaris was wearing a large fuzzy hat made from a coyote pelt, with the ears still attached. The hat, worn in combination with the gold beads that hung from his pointy black beard, made him look like Genghis Khan on his way to a furry convention.
“I think Do?a Ely will like the coyote hat,” he explained. “She dresses her cat up like a Jedi.” In Paul’s mind, this was a perfectly reasonable connection.
Do?a Ely lived three blocks behind the back wall of La Paz’s General Cemetery, down a cobblestone street, in a nondescript home with a single threadbare sheet hanging in the doorway. Many residences on the street had similar features: corrugated roofs, wooden walls, concrete floors. But Do?a Ely’s was the only home that also had a rack of sixty-seven human skulls, wearing matching cotton beanies, ready to grant favors to their many fervent devotees.
The sixty-seven skulls in Do?a Ely’s house were ?atitas. The name translates to “flat noses” or “little pug-nosed ones,” an adorable infantilization of a skull. To be a ?atita is to have special powers to connect the living and the dead. As Paul put it, “?atitas have to be human skulls, but not every skull gets to be a ?atita.”
These skulls did not belong to Do?a Ely’s friends or family members. The skulls appeared to Do?a Ely in dreams, alerting her to their presence. She went to collect them from overcrowded cemeteries, markets, archeological sites, and medical schools. Do?a Ely acts as their special caretaker, making offerings to them in return for help with everything from diabetes to debt.
Do?a Ely recognized Paul right away; he has been coming to La Paz to photograph ?atitas for the past eleven years. (And, to recap, Paul is pretty recognizable.)