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Abstract
Despite rapid social change, traditional mortuary rituals persist in contemporary Japan, and most Japanese ascribe their continuous compliance with tradition to cultural hegemony. In this article, I explore various other motivational forces behind their actions and illustrates how external pressures and individuals' internal motivations are intricately intertwined to generate human behavior. To do so, I consider the social and personal significance of Japanese funerals, examining rituals not only as an embodiment of sociocultural order but also as a culturally prescribed means to legitimize individuals' actions and define their identity. I also demonstrate the multiplicity and fluidity of cultural discourse and the malleability of tradition as well as individuals' active roles in perpetuating and altering mortuary tradition. Primary data were gathered from participant-observation research in Japan since 1988. [funerals, gift exchange, culture and the individual, motivations, identity, Japan]
"In the twentieth century, death rites have been held on an unprecedented scale," said Jan Van Bremen on the significance and elaboration of mortuary rituals in Japan (1997). The time and money Japanese spend on them clearly support his statement. Japanese funerals cost nearly $30,000 on average, dazzlingly higher than the comparable figures of $4,500 in the United States and $1,800 in England (Asahi Shimbun 1997b).1 Funerals are also expensive for the mourners because custom requires that they bring kôden, a cash gift. Furthermore, a funeral is not the last rite for the dead in Japan but is followed by a series of memorial services for many years after death.2
Attending funerals has been a major social duty for the Japanese. Those who are bound by such duty include not only relatives but also neighbors, colleagues, and business associates, as well as other people who have some kind of social tie to the deceased or his or her family. Thus, recollecting her trainee days in the early Shôwa period (1926-89), a teahouse owner in Kyoto's Gion district said that one of her important morning routines was to check obituaries in the newspaper so that her employer could attend customers' funerals without fail.3 More than a quarter century later, when my father was working for a Japanese firm, he, too, earnestly checked the obituary column and kept a black suit in his office to attend a funeral...