Scattering Ashes of the Family Dead: Memorial Activity among the Bereaved in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

Challenging normative practice of interment, scattering ashes emerged as a new ritual in Japan during 1990s. Both sensational and controversial, practice has met with cries of protest and enthusiastic support. As an expression of their respect and affection, people in Japan are expected to venerate family dead at a family altar and a family grave. Because maintaining grave evokes cherished notion of filial piety, some regard scattering ashes as a threat to memorial tradition. But bereaved who scatter their kin's ashes continue to memorialize their kin by selectively altering certain aspects of memorial activity. They create personally significant ways to honor their loved ones. Scattering ashes, characterized by innovation and flexibility, has increased range of memorial practices in Japan. (Japan, memorials, ritual change, ancestor worship) ********** Although scattering cremated ashes, or cremains, had been long considered illegal in postwar Japan, number of people supporting practice has increased since establishment of a citizens' movement in 1991, Grave-Free Promotion Society (GFPS). (2) In postwar Japan, stem family (ie) a Buddhist-style altar (butsudan), and had a social contract with a Buddhist temple to venerate ancestors at a family grave. The GFPS has been promoting people's right to choose scattering ashes and thus has challenged mortuary convention. People's reactions to scattering have been mixed. Because establishing and maintaining a family grave easily conjures up a positive moral idea of filial piety, opponents view scattering as a denial of reverence for ancestors. In particular, some Buddhist priests, funeral specialists, and gravestone-providers implicitly or explicitly depict scattering as an antifilial act showing little respect for ancestors. A 53-year-old priest of Shingon Buddhist Sect, for example, attacked scattering: Just throwing ashes like unwanted objects is disrespectful (Japan Times 2004). (3) As scattering is sometimes considered denial of ceremonies for family dead, this priest urges Japanese to preserve our unique culture for ceremonies and graves. Is scattering an antifilial denial of duty and respect for ancestors and custom? By drawing from traditional memorial acts as well as crafting their own, ash-scatterers create a personalized memorial activity. Rather than devaluing deceased, ash-scatterers express their sense of fulfillment in having helped deceased achieve a desired return to nature. Thus a 66-year-old woman declared, My deceased husband must be resting peacefully at sea embraced by Mother Nature--to which he wanted to return. At issue with ash-scatterers is not dismissal of memorial activity for family dead, but rather their choice of meaningful methods. For most postwar Japanese, death and ancestor rites have often been conducted as Buddhist rituals. Thirty years ago, Smith (1974:113) had already observed great variation in domestic observances of ancestral veneration and a waning influence of institutionalized Buddhism. Yet until recently, and even now to a considerable degree, the series of memorial observances in days and years following funeral remains firmly in hands of priesthood and temples (Smith 1999:258). Despite continuing involvement of Buddhist specialists in matters of death and memorial rites, since 1990s, questioning long-standing connections between Buddhism and mortuary and memorial ceremonies has increased. Various citizens' groups, often with obvious consumer concerns, have been established to consider such connections and to seek alternatives. Meeting consumers' demand, some funeral homes in urban areas now provide a nonreligious funeral as an alternative to a Buddhist one. While anthropologists have accumulated studies of ancestor worship by addressing its importance in maintaining and reproducing jural ties, social order, and solidarity in kinship groups (e. …