When Death Falls Apart
★★★★★
★★★★★
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€93.99
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A01=Hannah Gould
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Altar
Author_Hannah Gould
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Buddhism
Butsudan
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJF
Category=HBTB
Category=HD
Category=NHF
Category=NHTB
Category=NK
COP=United States
Death
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
Grave
Japan
Kuyo
Language_English
Material Religion
Memorials
Necromateriality
PA=Not yet available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9780226828992
- Weight: 399g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 11 Dec 2023
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Through an ethnographic study inside Japan’s Buddhist goods industry, this book establishes a method for understanding change in death ritual through attention to the dynamic lifecourse of necromaterials.
Deep in the Fukuyama mountainside, “the grave of the graves” (o-haka no haka) houses acres of unwanted headstones—the material remains of Japan’s discarded death rites. In the past, the Japanese dead became venerated ancestors through sustained ritual offerings at graves and at butsudan, Buddhist altars installed inside the home. But in twenty-first-century Japan, this intergenerational system of care is rapidly collapsing.
In noisy carpentry studios, flashy funeral-goods showrooms, neglected cemeteries, and cramped kitchens where women prepare memorial feasts, Hannah Gould analyzes the lifecycle of butsudan, illuminating how they are made, circulate through religious and funerary economies, mediate intimate exchanges between the living and the dead, and—as the population ages, families disperse, and fewer homes have space for large lacquer cabinets—eventually fall into disuse. What happens, she asks, when a funerary technology becomes obsolete? And what will take its place? Gould examines new products better suited to urban apartments: miniature urns and sleek altars inspired by Scandinavian design, even reliquary jewelry. She visits an automated columbarium and considers new ritual practices that embrace impermanence. At an industry expo, she takes on the role of “demonstration corpse.” Throughout, Gould invites us to rethink memorialization and describes a distinct form of Japanese necrosociality, one based on material exchanges that seek to both nurture the dead and disentangle them from the world of the living.
Deep in the Fukuyama mountainside, “the grave of the graves” (o-haka no haka) houses acres of unwanted headstones—the material remains of Japan’s discarded death rites. In the past, the Japanese dead became venerated ancestors through sustained ritual offerings at graves and at butsudan, Buddhist altars installed inside the home. But in twenty-first-century Japan, this intergenerational system of care is rapidly collapsing.
In noisy carpentry studios, flashy funeral-goods showrooms, neglected cemeteries, and cramped kitchens where women prepare memorial feasts, Hannah Gould analyzes the lifecycle of butsudan, illuminating how they are made, circulate through religious and funerary economies, mediate intimate exchanges between the living and the dead, and—as the population ages, families disperse, and fewer homes have space for large lacquer cabinets—eventually fall into disuse. What happens, she asks, when a funerary technology becomes obsolete? And what will take its place? Gould examines new products better suited to urban apartments: miniature urns and sleek altars inspired by Scandinavian design, even reliquary jewelry. She visits an automated columbarium and considers new ritual practices that embrace impermanence. At an industry expo, she takes on the role of “demonstration corpse.” Throughout, Gould invites us to rethink memorialization and describes a distinct form of Japanese necrosociality, one based on material exchanges that seek to both nurture the dead and disentangle them from the world of the living.
Hannah Gould is a Melbourne Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the School of Social and Political Sciences and a member of the DeathTech Research Team at the University of Melbourne. She is president of the Australian Death Studies Society, coeditor of Aromas of Asia, and coauthor of Death and Funerary Practices in Japan.
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