Modern passings
Subtitle: death rites, politics, and social change in Imperial Japan
By: Andrew Bernstein.
Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Honolulu
Language: eng
Number of pages: 242
ISBN-13: 9780824828745
Subjects: Death -- Social aspects -- Japan -- History -- 19th century.; Death -- Social aspects -- Japan -- History -- 20th century.; Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Japan -- History -- 19th century.; Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Japan -- History -- 20th century.; Japan -- Social life and customs -- 1868-1912.; Japan -- Social life and customs -- 1912-1945.
Description: "What to do with the dead? In Imperial Japan, as elsewhere in the modernizing world, answering this perennial question meant relying on age-old solutions. Funerals, burials, and other mortuary rites had developed over the centuries with the aim of building continuity in the face of loss." "Following an overview of the early development of funerary rituals in Japan, Andrew Bernstein demonstrates how diverse premodern practices from different regions and social strata were homogenized with those generated by middle-class city dwellers to create the form of funerary practice dominant today. He describes the controversy over cremation, explaining how and why it became the accepted manner of disposing of the dead." "In the process, Bernstein shows how today's "traditional" funeral is in fact an early twentieth-century invention and traces the social and political factors that led to this development."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.