Masayo Isurugi prays in front of an altar with the urn containing her late husband’s ashes after an automated system delivered the zushi box to the mourning booth at the Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
TOKYO: Masayo Isurugi settles into a booth on the sixth floor of a sleek Tokyo building, scans an ID card and waits for an automated system to deliver her late husband’s ashes.
More and more people in Japan are breaking with traditions on burial and mourning, swapping hometown graveyards for modern takes on cemeteries.
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Masayo Isurugi prays in front of an altar with the urn containing her late husband’s ashes after an automated system delivered the zushi box to the mourning booth at the Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
A zushi box containing an urn being transported to a mourning booth altar via a conveyor at the Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
The Ruriden facility, an octagon-shaped space with walls of floor-to-ceiling displaying glass Buddha statuettes symbolising individuals whose ashes are stored there, at the Kokokuji Buddhist temple in Tokyo. — AFP
A zushi box containing an urn being transported to a mourning booth altar via a conveyor at the Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
The Shinjuku Rurikoin Byakurengedo Buddhist temple, a multi-storey charnel house, in Tokyo. Traditionally in Japan, cremated remains are placed in family tombs used over many generations and tended by the family's eldest sons but Japan's disproportionately greying population makes for an imbalance between the number of new graves needing tending and the young people willing and able to do it. To address the problem, a crop of modern, indoor cemetery facilities have emerged, offering to store remains for a set period, often up to three decades. — AFP
Masayo Isurugi scans an ID card and waits for an automated system to deliver the urn holding her late husband’s ashes at a mourning booth of the Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
Warehouse-style industrial stacking racks that contain zushi boxes holding urns at Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
Warehouse-style industrial stacking racks that contain zushi boxes holding urns at the Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, in Tokyo. — AFP
Tomohiro Hirose, resident monk of Kuramae-ryoen facility, a multi-storey charnel house and Buddhist temple, scans a QR code of a departed pet dog engraved on plaques to provide some personalisation, in Tokyo. — AFP
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