japanese funeral

A Japanese friend of mine recently had a death in the family. He was talking to me about whether he would make it to the funeral, and reminiscing with me about funerals not knowing it was my first time learning of this part of his culture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral

Cremation

Cremation in Japan, illustration from 1867

Picking the bones from the ashes, illustration from 1867

The coffin is placed on a tray in the crematorium. The family witnesses the sliding of the body into the cremation chamber. A cremation usually takes about two hours, and the family returns at a scheduled time when the cremation has been completed. According to the Yamaguchi Saijo Funeral Parlor and Crematorium in Sapporo, it takes about an hour and a half to cremate an adult body, 45 minutes for a child, 15 minutes for a stillborn baby. The gurney with the final remnants is allowed to cool for fifteen minutes before being presented to relatives for bone and ash collection.^{[citation needed]}

The relatives pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to the urn using chopsticks, two relatives sometimes holding the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks (or, according to some sources, passing the bones from chopsticks to chopsticks). This is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks. At all other times, holding anything with chopsticks by two people at the same time, or passing an item from chopsticks to chopsticks will remind all bystanders of the funeral of a close relative and is considered to be a major social faux pas. The bones of the feet are picked up first, and the bones of the head last. This is to ensure that the deceased is not upside down in the urn. The hyoid bone (a bone located in the neck) is the most significant bone to be put in the urn.

In some cases, the ashes may be divided between more than one urn, for example if part of the ashes are to go to a family grave, and another part to the temple, or even to a company grave or a burial in space. Many companies have company graves in the largest graveyard in Japan, Okuno-In on Mount Kōya, burial place of Kūkai (774 - 835). These graves are for former company employees and their relatives, and often have a gravestone related to the company business. For example, the coffee company UCC has a gravestone in the shape of a coffee cup, and a metal rocket sits on top of the gravesite of an aeronautics company.^{[citation needed]}

Depending on the local custom the urn may stay at the family home for a number of days, or be taken directly to the graveyard.

[edit]