From Here to Eternity

by Caitlin Doughty

  “This is the ‘living room type’ family funeral,” he said, opening the door into a normal Japanese condominium (sadly not Victorian-themed like the hallway).

  “So this is just someone’s condo? But no one actually stays here?” I asked, confused.

  “Yes, they stay here. You can have the whole wake with the body here.”

  The condo had everything to make a family comfortable—microwaves, a big shower, sofas. Futon mats were available for up to fifteen people to sleep on overnight. In a big city like Yokohama, actual family apartments are not large enough to accommodate out-of-town mourners, so the family can gather here to hang out with the body instead.

  This room flooded me with emotion and inspiration. There is a difficult discussion that rarely happens among American funeral directors: viewing the embalmed body is often an unpleasant experience for the family. There are exceptions to this rule, but the immediate family is given almost no meaningful time with the body (which in all likelihood was swiftly removed after death). Before the family has time to be with their dead person and process the loss, coworkers and distant cousins arrive, and everyone is forced into a public performance of grief and humility.

  I wondered what it would be like if there were places like Lastel in every major city. Spaces outside the stiff, ceremonial norm, where the family can just be with the body, free from the performance required at a formal viewing. Spaces that are safe, comfortable, like home.

  HISTORY IS FILLED with ideas that arrived before their time. In the 1980s, Hiroshi Ueda, a Japanese camera company employee, created the first camera “extender stick,” allowing him to capture self-portraits on his travels. The camera extender received a patent in 1983, but didn’t sell. The contraption seemed so trivial that it even made a cameo in the book of chindōgu or “un-useful inventions.” (Other chindōgu: tiny slippers for your cat, electric fans attached to chopsticks to cool off your ramen noodles.) Without fanfair, Ueda’s patent expired in 2003. Today, surrounded by the masses wielding selfie sticks like narcissistic Jedi knights, he seemed remarkably calm in his defeat, telling the BBC, “We call it a 3 a.m. invention—it arrived too early.”

  The history of death and funerals is also filled with ideas before their time—the Reaper’s own 3 a.m. inventions. One such creation arrived in 1820s’ London. The city was at that time hunting for a solution to the problem of its overcrowded and smelly urban graveyards. Stacks of coffins went twenty feet deep into the soil. Half-decomposed bodies were exposed to public view when wood from their coffins was smashed up and sold to the poor for firewood. This overcrowding was so visible to the average Londoner that Reverend John Blackburn said, “Many delicate minds must sicken to witness the heaped soil, saturated and blackened with human remains and fragments of the dead.” It was time to try something else.

  Proposals to reform London’s system of burials began to pour in, including one from an architect named Thomas Willson. If land shortage was the problem, Willson proposed that instead of digging further down to bury the bodies, London should send its dead skyward in a massive burial pyramid. This pyramid would be made from brick and granite and situated at the top of a hill—what is now Primrose Hill, overlooking central London. It would be ninety-four stories tall, four times taller than St. Paul’s Cathedral, and hold five million bodies. I’m going to hit you with that number again: five million bodies.

  The pyramid would sit on only eighteen acres of land, but would be able to hold the equivalent of 1,000 acres of bodies. Willson’s Giant Corpse Pyramid (the actual name was the impossibly cool Metropolitan Sepulchre) spoke to Londoners’ enthusiasm for Egyptian artifacts and architecture. Willson was even invited to present his idea before Parliament. And yet, the public did not embrace the concept. The Literary Gazette labeled the project a “monstrous piece of folly.” The public wanted garden cemeteries, they wanted to push the dead outside the cramped churchyards of central London and send them to sprawling landscapes where they could picnic and commune with the dead. They didn’t want a giant death mound (whose weight might have crushed the hill), a monument to rot, dominating the city’s skyline.

  All ended in shame for Willson. His pyramid idea was pilfered by a French architect. After accusing his colleague of intellectual theft, he was sued for libel. But what if the idea for the Metropolitan Sepulchre was just the selfie stick of mortality, arrived before its time? Every giant leap we take to redesign deathcare comes with the caveat that the idea might end up in the pile with other chindōgu.

  Just five minutes from the Ryōgoku station, right around the corner from the Sumo Hall in Tokyo, is one of the highest-tech funeral facilities in the world. On your lunch break you can hop on the train, walk past the wrestlers in their patterned kimonos, and arrive at Daitokuin Ryōgoku Ryoen, a multistory temple and graveyard.

  Daitokuin Ryōgoku Ryoen looks more like an office building than a typical graveyard. The facility exudes a corporate feel, starting with the neatly dressed public relations woman who met us in the lobby. She worked for Nichiryoku Co., overall the third largest Japanese funeral company, but number one in the indoor cemeteries and graves market. “We are the pioneers of indoor facilities,” she explained, “and the only large funeral company that is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.”

  My DIY bias led me to identify more with the quirky-independent-monk light-up-Buddha team, but I had to admit that Nichiryoku Co. had discovered a market. In the 1980s, the price of land in Tokyo skyrocketed. In the 1990s a tiny grave could go for 6 million yen ($53,000 US). The market was ripe for more affordable, convenient, urban options (say, a cemetery right off the train).

  Of course, being close to the train station isn’t what makes the cemetery high-tech. The facility manager took us on a tour, starting with a long hallway with hyper-reflective black flooring and bright white overhead lighting. Lining each wall were individual pods, with privacy coverings made of translucent green glass. The whole impression was that of a 1980s movie imagining “the future,” a design choice I endorsed.

  Inside the pods, behind the glass, stood traditional granite gravestones. Each stone had a rectangular hole at the base, the size of a textbook. Fresh flowers sat in a vase, and incense waited to be lit. The manager took out a touch card similar to the one used at the Ruriden columbarium. Simulating what a family member would do, he touched the card to an electronic keypad. “The Sakura card recognizes the urn,” he explained. Glass doors slid shut, hiding the gravestone.

  Behind the scenes, magic was happening. I heard the dull whir of the robot’s arm as it plucked our urn from among 4,700 others. After about a minute the glass doors opened to reveal the gravestone. The rectangular hole now contained the urn, with a family symbol and name personalized on the front. “The idea is that many people can use the facility. We can store as many as possible,” the manager explained. The facility can accommodate 7,200 urns, and it is already more than half full. “If you have your own grave, at your own family cemetery you have to change the flowers, light the incense. It’s a lot of work. Here we do that all for you.”

  Of course, for the griever truly on the go, there is now an online service that allows for virtual grave visits. Another Tokyo company, I-Can Corp., presents a Sims-like experience in which your ancestor’s virtual gravestone appears on screen in a green field. The user can, according to taste, light a virtual incense stick, place flowers, sprinkle water on the stone, and leave fruit and glasses of beer.

  The president of I-Can Corp. acknowledged that “certainly, it is best to pay ancestors an actual visit.” But, “our service is for those who believe that it is possible to pay their respects in front of a computer screen.”

  The head monk at Daitokuin Ryōgoku Ryoen, Masuda jūshoku, seemed permanently relaxed, and like Yajima jūshoku, had no problems with Buddhism mixing old and new ideas. (As we left he cycled away on his bike, in full robes, talking on his cellphone). The facility was a partner project between his temple and Nichiryoku Co. Years of planni
ng went into the high-rise cemetery, which opened to the public in 2013.

  “Well, you’ve seen the facility, what do you think of it?” he asked wryly.

  “It’s more technology-based than any cemetery we have in the United States,” I replied. “And everything is so clean here, from the cemeteries to the cremation machines. Everything is cleaner, and much less industrial.”

  “Well, dealing with death has become cleaner,” he acknowledged. “People used to fear the dead body, but we’ve made it clean. And then the cemeteries became like a park, neat and clean.”

  Masuda indulged me in a long conversation about cremation trends in both Japan and America. We discussed how the Japanese were moving away from the kotsuage, in which the family personally removes the bones, preferring instead to have the facility’s employees grind the bones down and scatter them. “Traditionally, Japanese people are concerned with the skeleton,” he explained. “They perform the kotsuage, as you know. They like the bones, they don’t want ash.”

  “Then what has changed?” I asked.

  “There are feelings that come with the bones, responsibility for the soul. Bones are real,” Masuda said. “The people who scatter the ash are trying to forget. Trying to put aside the things they don’t want to think about.”

  “Do you think that’s a good thing?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it’s a good thing. You can try to make death cleaner, but especially after the big earthquake, and with the suicide rate being very high, death has come closer. There are people who take their lives before the age of ten. People are beginning to think about death. You can’t ignore it anymore.”

  THERE WAS a time when the Japanese feared the corpse as unclean and impure. They have largely overcome that fear and have begun to see the body in the casket not for what it was, but for who it belonged to—not a cursed object, but a beloved grandpa. The Japanese make an effort to integrate rituals with the body, and ensure the family has enough time to spend in its presence. Meanwhile, countries like the U.S. have done the reverse. Once we cared for our corpses at home. Before the rise of the professional death class we did not have the fear the Japanese had of the dead, and we valued the presence of the corpse. But in recent years we have been taught to see the dead as unclean and impure, and fear of the physical dead body has risen, along with our direct cremation rate.

  What’s more, and what sets them apart, is that the Japanese have not been afraid to integrate technology and innovation in their funerals and memorials. We don’t have a single space like Ruriden with its glowing Buddhas or Daitokuin Ryōgoku Ryoen with its robot retrieval system. Our funeral homes are considered high-tech if they offer online obituaries or a photo slideshow during the funeral.

  If anything, the Japanese funeral market can prove to Western countries that you don’t have to choose between technology and interaction with the dead body. Even better, you can offer both options to clients at your funeral home and not destroy your bottom line. And yes, more than ever, I want a corpse hotel.

  ___________

  * Not the rolling fog eighties music video type.

  ** Yes, it’s her.

  BOLIVIA

  LA PAZ

  Paul Koudounaris was wearing a large fuzzy hat made from a coyote pelt, with the ears still attached. The hat, worn in combination with the gold beads that hung from his pointy black beard, made him look like Genghis Khan on his way to a furry convention.

  “I think Doña Ely will like the coyote hat,” he explained. “She dresses her cat up like a Jedi.” In Paul’s mind, this was a perfectly reasonable connection.

  Doña Ely lived three blocks behind the back wall of La Paz’s General Cemetery, down a cobblestone street, in a nondescript home with a single threadbare sheet hanging in the doorway. Many residences on the street had similar features: corrugated roofs, wooden walls, concrete floors. But Doña Ely’s was the only home that also had a rack of sixty-seven human skulls, wearing matching cotton beanies, ready to grant favors to their many fervent devotees.

  The sixty-seven skulls in Doña Ely’s house were ñatitas. The name translates to “flat noses” or “little pug-nosed ones,” an adorable infantilization of a skull. To be a ñatita is to have special powers to connect the living and the dead. As Paul put it, “Ñatitas have to be human skulls, but not every skull gets to be a ñatita.”

  These skulls did not belong to Doña Ely’s friends or family members. The skulls appeared to Doña Ely in dreams, alerting her to their presence. She went to collect them from overcrowded cemeteries, markets, archeological sites, and medical schools. Doña Ely acts as their special caretaker, making offerings to them in return for help with everything from diabetes to debt.

  Doña Ely recognized Paul right away; he has been coming to La Paz to photograph ñatitas for the past eleven years. (And, to recap, Paul is pretty recognizable.)

  “Dónde está su gato?” he asked. (“Where is your cat?”)

  Doña Ely and Paul share two cross-cultural connections: one, their obvious love of skulls, and two, dressing up their cats in costume. Paul pulled out his cellphone and began to show Ely pictures of his own cat, Baba, dressed as “Cat-urday Night Fever” with a handlebar mustache, a gold neck chain, and a permed wig, and “Florence Nighten-tail” with nurse uniform and stethoscope.

  “Aaaaah!” Doña Ely exclaimed in delight, recognizing a true kindred spirit.

  The skulls, on the other hand, wore identical cotton beanies, light blue in color, with their individual names embroidered on the front, like babies in a nursery: Ramiro, Carlota, Jose, Waldo (found him!). These weren’t their names originally; the names were bestowed by Doña Ely when the skulls became ñatitas.

  Each one of Doña Ely’s ñatitas has a distinct personality, and a distinct gift. Carlitos is the skull you’d visit for medical issues; Cecilia helps students studying at university. Seven of the skulls, including Maria and Cielo, were the skulls of children and infants, so they specialize in children’s issues. The skulls had coca leaves in their mouths, and the crevices between them were stuffed with brightly wrapped candy. Other offerings made to the ñatitas by their estimated two to three hundred devotees included flowers, bottles of soda, and entire watermelons and pineapples.

  Certain skulls were considered the most powerful, the heavy hitters. Oscar sat on the top shelf wearing a police cap. Oscar was the first of Doña Ely’s ñatitas, acquired eighteen years ago. “We had lost our house, had no work, no money,” she explained, “and Oscar helped us to get back on our feet.” Doña Ely can say with certainty that the ñatitas work miracles, because she has experienced the miracles for herself.

  Another powerful ñatita was Sandra, and it was easy to see why. At least a quarter of Doña Ely’s ñatitas were not as much skulls as they were mummified heads, and Sandra was the pièce de résistance. She had one of the more elegantly preserved heads I have ever seen, chubby-cheeked and smiling. Leathery skin covered the entirety of her face, including her lips, which seemed to curl up into a jovial smile. Two thick salt-and-pepper braids wound down the sides of her head. Even her nose was intact (rare, and hardly qualifying her as “pug-nosed”). In a feminist move, Sandra’s specialty was financial negotiations and business.

  Paul came closer to take photographs of Sandra. “Ah, here,” Doña Ely said, sensing he was trying to get a tighter shot. She pulled Sandra from the shelf and removed her “Sandra” beanie, revealing the full extent of the preservation. Doña Ely looked around, searching for an even nicer accessory for Sandra’s close-up. As she went to fetch it, she handed Sandra’s head to me.

  “Oh, yeah, okay, sure,” I fumbled.

  When I held Sandra close, I could see her eyelids and a full set of light, fluttery eyelashes. If she had been acquired by a medical or history museum in the U.S., glass would have separated us. In La Paz, it was just me and—alas, poor Sandra.

  Doña Ely returned with a tall white top hat for Sandra and plopped it on her head. Paul was snapping photos. �
��Okay, hold Sandra up closer to you, there we go,” he said. “Caitlin, can you smile a little, you look so dour.”

  “This is a human head. I don’t need pictures of me grinning with a severed human head,” I said.

  “Sandra’s smiling way more than you are, try to look a little less melancholy, please.”

  After I returned Sandra to the shelves and we prepared to leave, I noticed a brand-new set of teal embroidered beanies stacked next to the door. A woman waiting her turn to consult with Doña Ely’s ñatitas explained, “Oh, they get a new color every month. Last month it was orange. These are the new ones. I like this color. It’s going to look good on them.”

  DOÑA ELY HAS a significant collection of ñatitas (“I’ve photographed charnel houses with fewer skulls than Doña Ely’s house,” said Paul), but the most well-known ñatitas belong to Doña Ana. Full disclosure: I never actually saw Doña Ana. On the day we visited, a whole room of people were waiting around a huge cast-iron cauldron to enjoy an audience with her. Doña Ana’s ñatitas speak to her in dreams, and based on your problem she will tell you which of the skulls to consult (Jose Maria, Nacho, Angel, Angel 2, and the very popular Jhonny).

  Each of Doña Ana’s two dozen ñatitas sat atop a glittering pillow in its own glass-fronted box. They wore safari hats with flowers along the brim. Cotton balls were stuffed in their eye sockets. Strips of tinfoil covered their upper and lower teeth, like metal mouthguards.

  “What is the tinfoil for?” I asked Paul.

  “To protect their teeth when they smoke,” he said.

  “They smoke?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  The Roman Catholic Church, as a general rule, has never thrilled to the presence of the ñatitas in La Paz. In the past, priests presiding over the annual Fiesta de las Ñatitas have announced to the crowds seeking blessings that the “skulls must be buried” and “should not be venerated.”