Cultural differences often make things which have been taken
as common by people living in some region or country seem strange
and curious to other people. Most people in the Kanto area eat
natto, fermented soybeans, for example, but most Kansai
people and non-Japanese dislike it, and say that natto
is just rotted soybeans. Also it seems to be partially owing to
cultural differences that catching whales and civilian ownership
of guns have been made into problems. It was most amazing for me
to know, however, that the Japanese way of treating the bones of
someone who has died is thought to be odd.
According to Tetsuo Yamaori in his book Folklore About
Death, the Japanese funeral has a position in the world as a
"strange and odd custom," and he reports that John McManners, an
English historian, looked at Japanese, who preserve
"respectfully" the dead person's ash stuffed in a pot; "in the
same way as looking at people of a foreign culture who cut a dead
body into pieces." This may not hold true in present days,
because many more people in countries where burial has been the
main practice now have come to accept cremation as more
convenient, so therefore more people have come to use a pot for
holding the ash and bones. Still, though, I wonder why we
Japanese began to bury our dead in this strange and complex
way.
When I was nine, my grandfather passed away. It was my first
experience to lose a member of the family and to be present at a
funeral. As he had lived with my family, his funeral was held at
our house. Soon after the funeral, my grandfather was taken in a
hearse to a crematorium. I remember that a wisp of white smoke
went up to the sky while he was turning into just a soul and ash.
Gradually the wisp became thin and weak, and then he was taken
out of the fire. My family picked up his bones and put them into
a white china pot. While gathering the bones, my mother said to
my sister and me, "You two are to hold one bone together using
chopsticks." It seemed to me that the way of picking up bones was
fixed. After this process, we brought the um to our house, and a
few days after stored it in a grave.
Masao Fujii, in his book The Folklore of Bones,
writes, "As far as I know, a bereaved family cries for deep
sadness . . . until the coffin in which the dead lies is taken
into the fire, but the faces look bright when gathering the
bones; to turn to bones means that the dead has become a god,
without a regret in this world." Fujii points out as well that a
grave is modeled after a woman's private parts. The "god"
mentioned, by the way, kami, in Japanese, does not mean "God,"
but rather "powers above," or "the upper ones," using the words
of Lafcadio Hearn in his book Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of
Japanese Inner Life. Considering all these things, the
Japanese way of burying bones seems to have something to do with
"rebirth."
The soul is something to stay in the body. Most Japanese think
of soul and body as separate, but if the soul is to appear in
this world it needs a figure. I think a cremation um is like a
substitution for a body. That is to say, as an um has bones
inside, it seems to take the position of the flesh. And that a
grave's structure resembles a woman's body means that the inside
of the grave is a womb. So I can conclude that Japanese carry on
a funeral in this strange way because they think the departed is
sure to turn up in the world again if put to rest in the state of
before coming into existence.
by Chie Iijima
Works Cited
Fujii, Masao. The Folklore of Bones. Tokyo: Kobundo,
1989.
Hearn, Lafcadio. Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese
Inner Life. London: Gray and Hancock, 1910.
Yamaori, Tetsuo. Folklore about Death. Tokyo:
Iwanami, 1990.
