Being dead otherwise /
With an aging population, declining marriage and childbirth rates, and a rise in single households, more Japanese are living and dying alone. Many dead are no longer buried in traditional ancestral graves where their descendants would tend their spirits and individuals are increasingly taking on mor...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Durham, North Carolina :
Duke University Press,
2023.
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| Summary: | With an aging population, declining marriage and childbirth rates, and a rise in single households, more Japanese are living and dying alone. Many dead are no longer buried in traditional ancestral graves where their descendants would tend their spirits and individuals are increasingly taking on mortuary preparation for themselves. In Being Dead Otherwise Anne Allison examines the emergence of new death practices in Japan as the old customs of mortuary care are coming undone. She outlines the new proliferation of industries, services, initiatives and businesses that offer alternative means for tending to the dead, ranging from automated graves, collective gravesites and crematoria to one-stop mortuary complexes and robot priests. These new burial and ritual practices provide alternatives to the long-standing traditions of burial and commemoration of the dead. In charting this shifting ecology of death, Allison outlines the potential of these solutions to radically reorient sociality in Japan in ways that will impact how we think about death, identity, tradition and culture in Japan and beyond. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 241 pages, {8} pages of color plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781478019848 1478019840 9781478017141 1478017147 |