Land-starved Japanese turn to ‘death vault’ in lieu of graves
When I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer, one of the images that lingered after I finished (and I’m not alone in this) was the coffin hotel that Case calls home in Chiba. The inverse of a ‘coffin hotel’ is, of course, a ‘hotel coffin’ - where presumably the dead would go to spend their after-lives in catered comfort. The problem - and the solution - are really the same for both…namely, how do you house lots of people who aren’t going anywhere in a limited amount of real estate? Simple - just stack them on top of each other.
For 79-year-old Shinya Shimada, paying his respects around the time of Japan’s annual Bon festival, when the spirits of ancestors are believed to return home, means a visit to a modern vault rather than a traditional graveyard.
“Initially, I was a bit uncomfortable with a high-tech grave. But now, I have come to see it positively,” Shimada said.
At the nondescript three-storey building alongside a Buddhist temple, Shimada uses an identity card to dial-up the gravestones and urns carrying his ancestors’ ashes.
A library-stack-like machine behind altars transports them, complete with accompanying music and pictures of the deceased on a TV monitor.
“Looking at their pictures, I actually talk a lot more to my deceased parents and sister,” Shimada said. “Unlike the usual gravestone, this makes me feel nostalgic.”
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