Abstract
This chapter explores how Japanese attitudes towards death today both mirror the contemporary developed world as a whole, in the sense of death as a taboo to be hidden in hospitals, and also have their own very particular qualities, in the devotion to the departed dead apart from any belief in a monotheistic god. The chapter examines ancestor worship, beliefs in reincarnation, senses of the brevity of human life and suicide, and skepticism about any world beyond this one, as attitudes toward death in Japanese history that have extended into the present. It also looks at the growing individualization of death in Japan today, as death becomes not a matter of household ancestral worship but individual preference of funerals and also of senses of life after death, perhaps into an increasingly secular future.
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Mathews, G. (2019). Death and the Afterlife in Japan. In: Selin, H., Rakoff, R.M. (eds) Death Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18826-9_3
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