Last Rites and Comic Flights
PIcO IYER is the author of 15 books, including, most recently, twinned works on his adopted home, Autumn Light and A Beginner’s Guide to Japan. His next book, The Half Known Life, will be out at year’s end. This article is adapted from an essay accompanying the Criterion Collection’s recent release of The Funeral on Bluray and DVD.
Death stands at the center of life in Japan. In every last household here, the departed enjoy pride of place, their framed portraits and memorial tablets serving as shrines of a sort. My Japanese wife, like most of our neighbors, sets out fresh food and tea for her long-dead parents every morning and regularly travels two hours, by bus and three trains, to the family grave, where she fills in her late grandmother on the news of the week. Even after a funeral is concluded, the priest will return to the house, at prescribed intervals, again and again for years to come, and each time, family members are expected to travel long distances, dressed in black, to listen to high-speed, more or less indecipherable chanting.
Death is also very big business in Japan. That Buddhist priest gets paid handsomely for each of his pro forma visits. Headstones can cost up to $20,000, and the living are urged to purchase a Buddhist name to protect a departed loved one
