according to an article in the new york times online,written by norimitsu onishi, the ashes in a japanese urn are an apt metaphor for the future of the system of funeral buddhism in the country.
where as in the past, the japanese reliably counted on buddhist priest’s and their rituals as a source of comfort during the time surrounding the death of a loved one, many now are choosing to go with services provided funeral homes or cremations with no services at all (preferring instead to dump their loved one’s remains in the nearest ashtray and keep their kaimyo in the toilet in case they need something to aim at when they’re drunk).

photo of a priest staring disinterestedly at a wall, hat tip to the old grey lady
while there are a myriad of reasons for this shift in attitudes towards death and the proper place of religion during this time, to numerous to be discussed in detail here, there are a few notable trends listed in the articles.
1) the accelerated drop in religious belief in the cities combined with their ever increasing populations has led to a large group of people who have no religious belief whatsoever and see no need to start on the day of their death.
2) the rural demographic, where until recently buddhism was still strong, is aging and dying off as the younger generations move to cities and the birthrates are not enough to make up for the exodus of population and businesses. this leaves country temples serving an ever dwindling number of less affluent elderly to serve, thus making many temples financially insecure.
3) the sense of japanese that buddhism doesn’t cater to the needs of the living, thus making them more indifferent to what it teaches about what happens after death; and the lack of change in that area the clerics seem to want to make in this regard.
4) a lack of moral authority apparent in the buddhist temples since the end of wwii when they began to sell prestigious posthumous names to people who paid them enough money, thus denigrating names once reserved for revered buddhist adherents with strong moral characters to an indulgence of sorts. as appropriate in situations like these payments are usually made in unmarked in envelopes on a no receipt-cash only basis.
5) the general expense of traditional funerals combined with new rent a priests employed by funeral homes to provide services for people they most likely have never met before and willing to provide honest listings of fraudulent extravagant titles that can be attained at rock bottom prices and you get a receipt.
all these factors are combining together to create an a daunting challenge to the continuing existence of temples across the country. with funeral expenses being analogous in importance to these temples as tithing is to churches and synagogues in the west in terms of revenue sources, many priests face being the last generation of clerics ministering their religion in japan.
as a consequence many temples are expected to close their doors over the coming decades, taking with them (they claim) a major source of local history and sense of community and continuity in their local precincts. of course some of the major private and state sponsored temples and unesco tourists sites will be unaffected, but many charming repositories of small town rural culture will be disappearing. so if you always wanted to visit that one out of the way zen garden that somehow escaped being listed in the travel guides and is free of tourists, now might be a good time.

soon places like this might be overgrown memories of a different age
few random closing thoughts…
a) what’s going to happen to all the libraries of coin lockers supposedly holding parishioners souls? talk about a crappy afterlife, you’re closed in a hole in the wall until the local priest can’t make ends meet and then bulldozed; lame.
b) i find it darkly humorous that the priests see many of the sources of their decline, recognize they are preventable, and then do nothing. this lethargy in response to their situation seems to come from a certain amount of apathy about their beliefs. they talk about how other religions provide sermons and community services outside of funerals to keep their faith relevant to their congregations as if it would be some theoretically nice thing to do, and then take no action to emulate. has buddhism in japan become this esoteric that it no longer has an application in people’s daily lives? i suspect that it’s just laziness on the part of the priests
c) perhaps this is just the logical conclusion to japan’s seeming cognitive dissonance on the issue of religion. after all if you don’t believe in it and didn’t live your life according to its precepts and went to your death this way, how would having an extravagant funeral change this? it you believe that human existence ends when the lungs stop breathing, the heart stops beating, and the neurons stop firing signals through their dendrites why waste your money to commemorate, dedicate, exalt, and provide a home for a soul you don’t even believe exists? and if you do believe in a deity or higher power of some sort exists, do you really think that a life spent living in sin and unbelief can be made up for by having a really cool name and a nice funeral? i guess these types of services are more for the living, but if that’s true why not remember the dead in your own way? it would be a lot more meaningful and cost effective than spending over ten thousand dollars for a piece of lacquered wood and empty platitudes from some guy who never even met the deceased.
d) think of the boon to the horror movie industry. decrepit buildings, abandoned alters, moss covered statues, rooms with soul lockers; this will be great!