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When Death Falls Apart: Making and Unmaking the Necromaterial Traditions of Contemporary Japan
Barnes and Noble
When Death Falls Apart: Making and Unmaking the Necromaterial Traditions of Contemporary Japan
Current price: $30.00
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Barnes and Noble
When Death Falls Apart: Making and Unmaking the Necromaterial Traditions of Contemporary Japan
Current price: $30.00
Size: Paperback
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Deep in the Fukuyama mountainside, “the grave of the graves” (
) houses acres of unwanted headstonesthe 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
, 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
, illuminating how they are made, circulate through religious and funerary economies, mediate intimate exchanges between the living and the dead, andas the population ages, families disperse, and fewer homes have space for large lacquer cabinetseventually 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.