The Prague Post - QR codes and cranes: Japan embraces modern cemeteries

EUR -
AED 4.339901
AFN 82.97291
ALL 97.977767
AMD 454.421545
ANG 2.114593
AOA 1083.514144
ARS 1423.268618
AUD 1.793979
AWG 2.126855
AZN 2.004379
BAM 1.956812
BBD 2.386134
BDT 145.035005
BGN 1.956116
BHD 0.445476
BIF 3520.220489
BMD 1.181586
BND 1.501677
BOB 8.165705
BRL 6.408094
BSD 1.181811
BTN 101.016241
BWP 15.631621
BYN 3.8675
BYR 23159.08677
BZD 2.373677
CAD 1.608292
CDF 3404.149244
CHF 0.932156
CLF 0.028694
CLP 1101.11779
CNY 8.465003
CNH 8.458006
COP 4829.591229
CRC 596.508486
CUC 1.181586
CUP 31.312031
CVE 110.322053
CZK 24.677416
DJF 210.442597
DKK 7.460452
DOP 70.266338
DZD 152.801294
EGP 58.443729
ERN 17.723791
ETB 162.823369
FJD 2.635823
FKP 0.861135
GBP 0.858871
GEL 3.213878
GGP 0.861135
GHS 12.230549
GIP 0.861135
GMD 84.475209
GNF 10244.29786
GTQ 9.0877
GYD 247.140489
HKD 9.27548
HNL 30.883972
HRK 7.534993
HTG 154.990153
HUF 399.159882
IDR 19146.125115
ILS 3.982583
IMP 0.861135
INR 101.075885
IQD 1548.100603
IRR 49774.312762
ISK 142.19213
JEP 0.861135
JMD 189.80816
JOD 0.83779
JPY 168.693269
KES 152.743498
KGS 103.329173
KHR 4741.150956
KMF 495.084288
KPW 1063.52653
KRW 1598.898531
KWD 0.360479
KYD 0.98478
KZT 613.507277
LAK 25476.558156
LBP 105880.235544
LKR 354.603384
LRD 236.935513
LSL 20.776244
LTL 3.488917
LVL 0.714729
LYD 6.373296
MAD 10.606485
MDL 19.841673
MGA 5152.337503
MKD 61.535471
MMK 2480.415302
MNT 4234.949916
MOP 9.555258
MRU 46.904257
MUR 52.994174
MVR 18.182035
MWK 2049.098999
MXN 22.071767
MYR 4.959707
MZN 75.574784
NAD 20.776244
NGN 1813.77009
NIO 43.492492
NOK 11.847055
NPR 161.625585
NZD 1.932891
OMR 0.454311
PAB 1.181736
PEN 4.186465
PGK 4.87352
PHP 66.555143
PKR 335.328316
PLN 4.244431
PYG 9426.875128
QAR 4.296822
RON 5.073672
RSD 117.140119
RUB 92.69703
RWF 1697.627646
SAR 4.431254
SBD 9.850794
SCR 17.072049
SDG 709.541629
SEK 11.15764
SGD 1.501561
SHP 0.928541
SLE 26.52695
SLL 24777.273209
SOS 675.306372
SRD 44.025308
STD 24456.445823
SVC 10.340348
SYP 15362.938479
SZL 20.768741
THB 38.279252
TJS 11.669689
TMT 4.147367
TND 3.439379
TOP 2.767394
TRY 47.095425
TTD 7.99817
TWD 34.474004
TZS 3098.23911
UAH 49.451874
UGX 4248.196964
USD 1.181586
UYU 47.214417
UZS 15002.758708
VES 127.674941
VND 30874.84374
VUV 141.232975
WST 3.241675
XAF 656.254728
XAG 0.032458
XAU 0.000353
XCD 3.193295
XDR 0.822602
XOF 656.296405
XPF 119.331742
YER 286.239065
ZAR 20.773571
ZMK 10635.68957
ZMW 28.2128
ZWL 380.470229
  • CMSC

    0.0900

    22.314

    +0.4%

  • CMSD

    0.0250

    22.285

    +0.11%

  • RBGPF

    0.0000

    69.04

    0%

  • SCS

    0.0400

    10.74

    +0.37%

  • RELX

    0.0300

    53

    +0.06%

  • RIO

    -0.1400

    59.33

    -0.24%

  • GSK

    0.1300

    41.45

    +0.31%

  • NGG

    0.2700

    71.48

    +0.38%

  • BP

    0.1750

    30.4

    +0.58%

  • BTI

    0.7150

    48.215

    +1.48%

  • BCC

    0.7900

    91.02

    +0.87%

  • JRI

    0.0200

    13.13

    +0.15%

  • VOD

    0.0100

    9.85

    +0.1%

  • BCE

    -0.0600

    22.445

    -0.27%

  • RYCEF

    0.1000

    12

    +0.83%

  • AZN

    -0.1200

    73.71

    -0.16%

QR codes and cranes: Japan embraces modern cemeteries
QR codes and cranes: Japan embraces modern cemeteries / Photo: Behrouz MEHRI - AFP

QR codes and cranes: Japan embraces modern cemeteries

Masayo Isurugi settles into a booth on the sixth floor of a sleek Tokyo building, scans an ID card and waits for an automated system to deliver her late husband's ashes.

Text size:

More and more people in Japan are breaking with traditions on burial and mourning, swapping hometown graveyards for modern takes on cemeteries.

As the 60-year-old waits in one of ten mourning booths on the floor, cranes behind the walls move almost silently and retrieve the "zushi" box with the urn containing her late husband Go's ashes.

Chic wooden doors inside the booth quietly part like an elevator at a luxurious hotel and a gleaming, dark-stone altar emerges with Go's zushi box as its centrepiece, while a photo of him appears on a monitor.

"Initially, I thought maybe these facilities might feel cold and that I might prefer a traditional grave on soil," Isurugi told AFP.

"Now I feel it's better to have a place where I can visit whenever I want and offer prayers, rather than having a family grave that I could rarely visit."

Her family considered a traditional cemetery, but it was a two-hour train ride away. The Kuramae-ryoen facility is only brief bus ride from Isurugi's house and she can visit after work.

Traditionally in Japan, cremated remains are placed in family tombs used over many generations and tended by the family's eldest sons.

But Japan's disproportionately greying population makes for an imbalance between the number of new graves needing tending and the young people willing and able to do it.

Families are increasingly moving to urban areas far from ancestral graveyards, and many elderly don't have sons who can take on the traditional responsibility.

- 'A new style' -

Tomohiro Hirose, resident monk at the temple that supervises the Kuramae-ryoen facility, has a traditional cemetery with some 300 graves.

"But about half of the graves no longer have anyone in the family to look after them," he told AFP.

To address the problem, a crop of modern, indoor cemetery facilities have emerged, offering to store remains for a set period, often up to three decades.

The ashes are eventually transferred to collective memorials, but individual names or QR codes are engraved on plaques to provide some personalisation, and monks pledge to continue offering prayers for the souls of the departed.

Facing a busy boulevard in the Japanese capital, Kuramae-ryoen features warehouse-style industrial stacking racks that can store 7,000 zushi boxes, each of which can hold two urns or the bagged ashes of up to eight people.

Hirose decided to build the site after the temple's old building was badly damaged in the 2011 earthquake.

He felt the new building, which includes a temple, his living quarters, and the cemetery facility, would revitalise a site that dates back to 1608.

"This offers a new style. Many families find it easy to visit their graves," Hirose said.

The cemetery uses machinery developed by Daifuku, a firm that produces storage, transport and collection systems for factories and warehouses.

"Our company has built systems for around 60 (cemetery) facilities across the country," said Hidenobu Shinnaka, a senior official at Daifuku.

The first order came in the 1990s, and more recently there has been interest from other Asian markets too, he said.

- 'A warm-hearted manner' -

Modern cemetery sites are not only often more convenient, but cheaper.

An average spot costs around $7,100, roughly half a traditional gravesite, according to Kamakura Shinsho, a company that helps connect customers with cemeteries.

Other modern cemeteries are not big enough to need machinery, but incorporate other novel features.

Kokokuji temple, founded in Tokyo in 1630, has created a unique octagon-shaped space with walls of floor-to-ceiling displays of individual glass Buddha statuettes.

Each of the statues -- over 2,000 in all -- symbolises an individual whose ashes are stored there. When visitors scan an ID or enter a family name, the Buddha assigned to their loved one is illuminated.

The entire display can also be lit, and the system can produce various mosaic patterns with different statues illuminated in a variety of colours to produce a calming ambience in the dim sanctuary.

The display is meant to show that each of us is surrounded by many more, and all will join Buddha in the after-life, said resident monk Taijun Yajima, who built the Ruriden facility with artists and engineers.

He says mourning remains the same even in modern cemeteries.

"Children should look after the graves and the souls of parents... But in some people's reality, it is simply not possible," he said.

"I thought about how those people can be laid to rest in a warm-hearted manner, and this is the answer."

Q.Fiala--TPP