SHINTŌ OR BUDDHIST?
While Shintō is the 'native' and most-followed religion in Japan, the religious aspects of most Japanese funerals are Buddhist, requiring Buddhist sutras (in Chinese) to be recited by Buddhist priests. However, these funeral rites are heavily influenced and shaped by fundamentally Shintō beliefs, including practices not seen in other Buddhist funerary rituals around the world. So are these rituals more Buddhist, or Shintō?
In fact, they are a dynamic mixture of the two, the result of centuries of religious coexistence. A common theory even posits that a major feature of Shintō, the concept of death "pollution," or kegare, an integral concept in funerary rites and folklore, was actually formed in response to the spread of Buddhism in Japan in the Medieval Period.
KEGARE & THE POLLUTION OF DEATH
In Shintō belief, kegare, or pollution, is a kind of spiritual uncleanliness and can lead to misfortune. Unlike Western concepts of sin, kegare is not caused by individual actions, but by what might be called "natural" causes, such as childbirth, illness & aging, menstruation, sexual intercourse, and death.
Death, regardless of its causes, is seen to corrupt and make unclean those around it. Thus, many of the elements of the Shintō/Buddhist funeral practice are focused on cleansing the spirit of the deceased, the surviving family and community, and the deceased's home.
While this belief in death pollution is starting to become less strongly held in mainstream Japanese culture, the retention of some funerary rites (while others have been abandoned) suggests that this concern still holds some power in modern Japanese folklore.
It might be expected for such a major component of the Shintō belief system as it exists today to be one of its oldest. However, documents from before the flourishing of Buddhism in Japan do not reference this concern about kegare related to death and the kind of aversion and avoidance of the dead as came to be seen as "natural" and assumed, when seen in foreigners, was perceived as strange and unnatural.
After Buddhism, with its prescribed sutras and practices for death, became a state-sanctioned religion in the Medieval Era, these beliefs appeared, not in the Japanese Buddhist practice, but in Shintō ones. An explanation for this shift that has been proposed is that a place for Buddhist priests and their practices had to be created in the everyday lives of Japanese followers of Shintō, and so mortuary practices formed that required the services of a Buddhist priest and excluded those of a Shintō one (Shintō priests and religious workers must take extreme precautions to avoid defilement wit death kegare, and thus cannot attend to the dying or hold ceremonies on Shintō temple grounds).
PRACTICES TO ADRESS KEGARE AND HELP THE SPIRIT "MOVE ON"
The first rite in a Japanese funeral is to wet the deceased's lips with a wet piece of cotton or swab. The name of this practice translates to "last water" and is intended to refresh the spirit and help it along to the afterlife. In the past, this rite was sometimes done directly before death, instead of immediately after. It may have been a final attempt to preserve or revive life. As with many funeral rituals, this act was previously done by family members, but as most deaths in Japan occur in hospitals in the present day, this act is frequently performed by funeral workers.
Next, the body is bathed. This part of the practice initially was done for practical, hygienic reasons, and as a way to cleanse some kegare. Sometimes this is done in the hospital, symbolically, by a family member by wiping the face of the deceased with a sanitary wipe. However, as the industry of funeral services and halls has flourished, some offer elaborate bathing rituals, involving bath salts, fancy shampoos and soaps, and other spa-like elements.
These adaptations of the process place more emphasis on the decedent as the individual they were, as opposed to the older practices that placed an emphasis on how the deceased is no longer the person they were in life, and must now transition to the afterlife. While some practices focused on putting distance between the spirit of the deceased and their surviving family, such as breaking their rice bowl at the grave, turning around three times before leaving the funeral hall and the cemetery, and assigning the deceased a new "ancestor name" or kaimyō. Other special actions, such as putting on the decedent's kimono with the right side over the left (the reverse of how it is usually worn), placing a quilt over the body backwards, and adding hot water to cold (again, the reverse of what is usually done) to get the correct temperature, act as cultural frames to indicate that the death is significant and is so deviant from everyday life that things are backwards. These practices are both significant to the living as an expression of grief and to the spirit of the deceased, so that they are prompted to move on to the next stage of the spiritual journey.
After the body is cleaned and properly dressed, a table is set up beside their bedside with food offerings, flowers, incense, and objects that were significant to the deceased. Chopsticks are placed sticking straight up and down in a bowl of rice, something that is only done for the dead and which is taboo for everyday life. The doors to the family shrine is closed and sealed with a piece of white paper, to prevent kegare from polluting the shrine and angering the ancestral kami. Close family members and sometimes friends are invited to visit with the body. Buddhist sutras are chanted over the body by a priest. Recently, as fewer deaths occur at home and more of the dead are handed straight over from hospital workers to funeral service providers, this practice has evolved into a formal wake, with an elaborate altar and many guests. This is the part of the funerary process most similar to what we might call a funeral in the United States. These events can be very large and extremely costly, and guests are expected to bring money in special envelopes for the family.
While burials were performed before Buddhism, cremation became the dominant posthumous process, and have become an integral part of the funeral rites. After the wake, the family stays with the body, eating, drinking, and reminiscing about the deceased through the night, before a short, private funeral service the next day. The body is then transported to the crematorium. In the new, commercialized funeral system, discreet crematoriums are sometimes in the same building as the funeral hall. Reportedly, the farewell to the deceased before the body is cremated is often the final, and most passionate, moment of grief for the family.
After the cremation, there is a sense that the deceased is fully "gone," which may explain the lack of concern about kegare and the frequently more relaxed atmosphere for the next part of the rites, the bone-picking ritual. After the body is reduced to ash and bone, the skeleton is carefully arranged as it was in life by the crematorium attendants, with large bones broken into small pieces. The family then works with chopsticks, one bamboo and one wood (usually willow), two people to a bone, to pick up and place the bones and ashes into an urn. This ritual is why there are taboos around using mismatched chopsticks and two people grabbing the same item with chopsticks at the same time. It is considered important that the bones go into the urn starting with those of the foot and working upward until finishing with the skull. That way the deceased is said to be "standing up" and is not all jumbled together. The cervical bone known as the Atlas is especially significant as it is perceived to be the same shape as a seated Buddha, and it's condition and safe placement in the urn is important.
Japanese grave sites consist of a headstone with a chamber underneath, protected by a heavy slab of rock or concrete. Inside the chamber are a series of shelves upon which an urn is placed. The family, accompanied by a priest, take the urn to the cemetery and place it in the chamber. A final prayer is said, the deceased's rice bowl is broken, and the family turns three times after leaving the cemetery and scrub their hands with salt to address kegare and confuse the deceased's spirit so it doesn't follow them home.
The first forty-nine days are seen as a vital, perilous period after death for the spirit, and by extension, the family. Regular prayers and rituals every seventh day during this period were seen as necessary to ensure that the deceased's spirit safely made it to the afterlife. If it became lost during this period, it might become vengeful or dangerous and plague the living. In the past, the community would participate in these rituals, however in the busy modern world this has become too difficult, resulting in the practice of the "seventh day" and "fourteenth day" rituals being performed at the wake. It would seem that the performance of the rituals, and the presence of the community for them, is seen as more meaningful than the actual day on which they are performed.
After the forty-ninth day, the spirit is assumed to have successfully made its transition into a benevolent ancestral kami, and is honored along with the other ancestral spirits during annual festivals such as Bon. However, the family is still considered death-polluted for a year after the death and it is seen as inappropriate for them to send holiday greetings and attend festivities.
