Not-Waiting to Die Badly: Facing the Precarity of Dying Alone in Japan

Abstract

Support activities geared up in Japan at the time of the Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe in 1995. More Japanese opt for streamlined versions: the ‘direct funeral’ or ‘family funeral’ at the graveside that forego the elaboration of a more formal affair where attendants are treated to a meal, drink, and gifts. In the domain of care, much research is being done on the development of technological caregiving; Japan’s R & D in care robotics is the most advanced in the world, driven by the country’s highly aging society and what is already a care deficit. In modern Japan, grievability has been the purview of the family; one grieves, and is grieved by, others who are linked by marriage or blood. Advocating the disaggregation of the burial system from the family and family grave, he initiated a new way of being buried and memorialized outside family attachments the same year.