Being dead otherwise / Anne Allison.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Allison, Anne, 1950- author.

Series:

e-Duke books scholarly collection

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Death--Social aspects--Japan.

Death.

Death care industry--Japan.

Death care industry.

Funeral rites and ceremonies--Japan.

Funeral rites and ceremonies.

Japan--Social life and customs--21st century.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 241 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2023.

Summary:

"With an aging population, declining marriage and childbirth rates, and a rise in single households, more Japanese are living and dying alone. Many dead are no longer buried in traditional ancestral graves where their descendants would tend their spirits and individuals are increasingly taking on mortuary preparation for themselves. In Being Dead Otherwise Anne Allison examines the emergence of new death practices in Japan as the old customs of mortuary care are coming undone. She outlines the new proliferation of industries, services, initiatives, and businesses that offer alternative means for tending to the dead, ranging from automated graves, collective gravesites, and crematoria to one-stop mortuary complexes and robot priests. These new burial and ritual practices provide alternatives to the long-standing traditions of burial and commemoration of the dead. In charting this shifting ecology of death, Allison outlines the potential of these solutions to radically reorient sociality in Japan in ways that will impact how we think about death, identity, tradition, and culture in Japan and beyond."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Ambiguous bones : dead in the past

The popular industry of death : from Godzilla to the ending business

Caring (differently) for the dead

Preparedness : a biopolitics of making life out of death

The smell of lonely death and the work of cleaning it up

De-parting : the handling of remaindered remains

Automated graves : the precarity and prosthetics of caring for the dead.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Allison, Anne, 1950- Being dead otherwise.

ISBN:

9781478024415

1478024410

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.