Kustom
09-05-2005, 02:21 PM
One thing you gotta love about Japan, it never ceases to surprise you. Just when you think that you have seen it all and that nothing can feel strange anymore, then something new happens to make your jaw drop and yell "WTF!".
So here's the story about my first buddhist funeral.
I wasn't caught entirely unprepared, since a friend of mine already attended one and taught me the basics, but between being told and witnessing it, there's a world of difference...
My girlfriend's grand-mother kicked the bucket a month ago. It was not unexpected at all, as she had been in a coma for 2 months after a failed surgical operation.
All my girlfriend told me was to wear a black tie. Obviously the etiquette for funerals was easy enought not to warrant any explanation. You wish.
So we went there on a wenesday morning (everyone had taken a day off for the occasion, and that means everyone in the extended family). Me, my girlfriend and her mother, to attend her step-mother's funeral.
Family trouble
During the entire trip, mom was in a terrific mood, whistling along with salsa songs on the radio and joking with me.
But as soon as we passed the porch, she underwent the most complete change of expression I have ever seen. Remember the goblin looking at himself in the mirror, in the Spiderman movie?
Tearful eyes, face torn with pain, she entered the funeral hall like the living incarnation of grief... Wicked.
The funeral company, ironically called "Lifecare" in katakana, was a huge cement building where all the other guests were already waiting. About a hundred persons. I started bowing to each of them as I was introduced; little did I know that I would have to keep bowing to everyone for the next 4 hours...
Most of the people were not from the family but friends and colleagues of the father. Among the family, however, I quickly noticed there was a lot of tension because most of my girlfriend's father family hate the guts of her mother. You see, in Japan, the wife has to take care of her step-mother and fulfill each of her needs. So if the grand-mother died, surely it must be the wife's fault. This logic was really fucked up... Sure, there was no love lost between Kanako's mother and obaasan, but she would have to be pretty evil to bribe a surgeon to put grand-ma into a coma. She was fucking eighty-five. Pushing her down the stairs would have been enought.
Because the father's family hate her mother, their resentment extends also to the kids, but not to me because, well, I'm a gaijin so they're curious. Picture this: people that I've never met come and talk to me, while they actually pretend that my girlfriend is not there even though they're from the same family... Err... Enought with Japanese family politics.
Sobbing, budhists chants and elevator music
Then we are made to sit in front of the coffin in two different parts, one for the family, one for friends. This is when the trouble starts: since I'm not married to Kanako or even engaged, I have no right to sit with the family; but if I sit with people I don't know and don't understand what's going on, the probability that I'll fuck something up is too high... I am finally allowed to sit behind the family.
Gaijin 1, protocole 0.
A buddhist priest comes in and sits with his back to the room. He takes out some really cool-looking scrolls and start chanting something in deformed, very slow Japanese, kind of like Nô. While he's doing it, people get to stand 2 by 2 and walk to a small incense box. You have to bow to the family, then to the friends, then to the body, grab 3 pinches or incense and bring them to your forehead, and then pray.
Funeral tip #1: Stop about an inch of your forehead when you do that! You don't wanna have an orange stain on your forehead during the entire ceremony now do you! It happened to my friend. :D
So far so good, I didn't fuck up and I only forgot to bow once.
During the entire ceremony, I notice a woman sitting with the friends sobbing uncontrolably. She's making a hell of a lot of noise and I feel very sorry for her. Later I will learn that she actually never met obaasan, and is just working in the father's company. :confused:
When the chanting is over, a woman from Lifecare grabs a mike and start saying something in very polite Japanese while a "Winta no sonata" kind of music plays in the background. I am told she is making a sad speech about how hard it is for everyone to loose obaasan. My girlfriend and I are like "WTF! Bitch, you don't even know anyone here!", but apparently no one else seems offended. The sad music makes the women cry louder. Everything in the ceremony is designed to make you weep all the tears in your body. Meanwhile, the staff takes plenty of pictures. I can already imagine them talking with family members after the ceremony: "Do you like this one? You were crying real good there... Or maybe this one? Makes you look grieved but calm, some tears but not too many. We can enlarge it for only 2000 yens!"
Funeral tip #2: Always look super-sad in case you're being photographed. This will stay in the family picture albums.
Next, the family members fill the coffin with flowers (another tearful moment) and off we go to the crematorium. We haven't left the room yet that the staff is already busy cleaning the room for the next customer...
The Jolly Reaper Theme park: Where's your "Ohashi ga joozu desuneee!" now, bitch!
The crematorium is a few miles away. Fortunately, the family has enought taste not to have grand-ma ride one of those cars with a big shiny buddhist shrine on top (I have a picture somewhere), but a regular black one. The guests get to ride a tour bus (ah, Japan).
The crematorium is not a building, it's a fucking olympic village with hotel rooms, restaurants, a combini and conference halls. It's swarming with white-gloved henchmen, everything is marble and steel: it's just like a SPECTRE hideout. Grand-ma is pushed into some kind of elevator, and everybody says the final good-bye. After this moment everybody is in tears, and we are led to the cafetaria to find some expensive liquid comfort.
And here comes the bad part. After a little while, the family and I are brought inside of a sanitized steel room. There is a table in the center, employees with white masks greet us, it looks like a surgery block. Then an employee, a girl in her 20s, brings in what is left of grand-ma. They're not ashes mind you, but the actual bones, somewhat crushed beyond recognition. Then she takes out some wooden chopsticks, big ones like the one you use for cooking. 2 by 2, family members are made to pick up the bone fragments from the table and put them in the urn. I watch their faces as they're doing it: it's just as horrible for them as it would be for us. I can never forget the look on otoosan's face as he was picking up his mother's bones: white as a sheet and lips shaking. I was in shock.
When everybody is finished (me, I passed. I have a bad habit of dropping what I hold with chopsticks. And what if I say "Itadakimasu" out of habit?), the girl picks up what is left herself. As she comes upon a big bone, she asks "May I?" to the father, and then proceeds to break it in two. After that, the urn is already full, so without further asking, she starts crushing the bones with her hand to make more room. The sound is disgusting, everyone looks ready to faint. But boy, it wasn't just over yet. She then takes one last box, and pick up something in it. She proclaims cheerfully: "This is the nose!", and parades it in front of every guest. "This is the lower jaw!", "this is a fragment of the skull!", and so on, until every bone in grand-ma head has been on exhibit. She then puts everything in the urn, and closes it.
As we were leaving, I was feeling unnerved. But I'm not from the family; everyone else around me was a wreck.
Then, another thug with white gloves walked us out: it was time for lunch!
I ain't gonna forget that day soon.
This country will never stop surprising me!
So here's the story about my first buddhist funeral.
I wasn't caught entirely unprepared, since a friend of mine already attended one and taught me the basics, but between being told and witnessing it, there's a world of difference...
My girlfriend's grand-mother kicked the bucket a month ago. It was not unexpected at all, as she had been in a coma for 2 months after a failed surgical operation.
All my girlfriend told me was to wear a black tie. Obviously the etiquette for funerals was easy enought not to warrant any explanation. You wish.
So we went there on a wenesday morning (everyone had taken a day off for the occasion, and that means everyone in the extended family). Me, my girlfriend and her mother, to attend her step-mother's funeral.
Family trouble
During the entire trip, mom was in a terrific mood, whistling along with salsa songs on the radio and joking with me.
But as soon as we passed the porch, she underwent the most complete change of expression I have ever seen. Remember the goblin looking at himself in the mirror, in the Spiderman movie?
Tearful eyes, face torn with pain, she entered the funeral hall like the living incarnation of grief... Wicked.
The funeral company, ironically called "Lifecare" in katakana, was a huge cement building where all the other guests were already waiting. About a hundred persons. I started bowing to each of them as I was introduced; little did I know that I would have to keep bowing to everyone for the next 4 hours...
Most of the people were not from the family but friends and colleagues of the father. Among the family, however, I quickly noticed there was a lot of tension because most of my girlfriend's father family hate the guts of her mother. You see, in Japan, the wife has to take care of her step-mother and fulfill each of her needs. So if the grand-mother died, surely it must be the wife's fault. This logic was really fucked up... Sure, there was no love lost between Kanako's mother and obaasan, but she would have to be pretty evil to bribe a surgeon to put grand-ma into a coma. She was fucking eighty-five. Pushing her down the stairs would have been enought.
Because the father's family hate her mother, their resentment extends also to the kids, but not to me because, well, I'm a gaijin so they're curious. Picture this: people that I've never met come and talk to me, while they actually pretend that my girlfriend is not there even though they're from the same family... Err... Enought with Japanese family politics.
Sobbing, budhists chants and elevator music
Then we are made to sit in front of the coffin in two different parts, one for the family, one for friends. This is when the trouble starts: since I'm not married to Kanako or even engaged, I have no right to sit with the family; but if I sit with people I don't know and don't understand what's going on, the probability that I'll fuck something up is too high... I am finally allowed to sit behind the family.
Gaijin 1, protocole 0.
A buddhist priest comes in and sits with his back to the room. He takes out some really cool-looking scrolls and start chanting something in deformed, very slow Japanese, kind of like Nô. While he's doing it, people get to stand 2 by 2 and walk to a small incense box. You have to bow to the family, then to the friends, then to the body, grab 3 pinches or incense and bring them to your forehead, and then pray.
Funeral tip #1: Stop about an inch of your forehead when you do that! You don't wanna have an orange stain on your forehead during the entire ceremony now do you! It happened to my friend. :D
So far so good, I didn't fuck up and I only forgot to bow once.
During the entire ceremony, I notice a woman sitting with the friends sobbing uncontrolably. She's making a hell of a lot of noise and I feel very sorry for her. Later I will learn that she actually never met obaasan, and is just working in the father's company. :confused:
When the chanting is over, a woman from Lifecare grabs a mike and start saying something in very polite Japanese while a "Winta no sonata" kind of music plays in the background. I am told she is making a sad speech about how hard it is for everyone to loose obaasan. My girlfriend and I are like "WTF! Bitch, you don't even know anyone here!", but apparently no one else seems offended. The sad music makes the women cry louder. Everything in the ceremony is designed to make you weep all the tears in your body. Meanwhile, the staff takes plenty of pictures. I can already imagine them talking with family members after the ceremony: "Do you like this one? You were crying real good there... Or maybe this one? Makes you look grieved but calm, some tears but not too many. We can enlarge it for only 2000 yens!"
Funeral tip #2: Always look super-sad in case you're being photographed. This will stay in the family picture albums.
Next, the family members fill the coffin with flowers (another tearful moment) and off we go to the crematorium. We haven't left the room yet that the staff is already busy cleaning the room for the next customer...
The Jolly Reaper Theme park: Where's your "Ohashi ga joozu desuneee!" now, bitch!
The crematorium is a few miles away. Fortunately, the family has enought taste not to have grand-ma ride one of those cars with a big shiny buddhist shrine on top (I have a picture somewhere), but a regular black one. The guests get to ride a tour bus (ah, Japan).
The crematorium is not a building, it's a fucking olympic village with hotel rooms, restaurants, a combini and conference halls. It's swarming with white-gloved henchmen, everything is marble and steel: it's just like a SPECTRE hideout. Grand-ma is pushed into some kind of elevator, and everybody says the final good-bye. After this moment everybody is in tears, and we are led to the cafetaria to find some expensive liquid comfort.
And here comes the bad part. After a little while, the family and I are brought inside of a sanitized steel room. There is a table in the center, employees with white masks greet us, it looks like a surgery block. Then an employee, a girl in her 20s, brings in what is left of grand-ma. They're not ashes mind you, but the actual bones, somewhat crushed beyond recognition. Then she takes out some wooden chopsticks, big ones like the one you use for cooking. 2 by 2, family members are made to pick up the bone fragments from the table and put them in the urn. I watch their faces as they're doing it: it's just as horrible for them as it would be for us. I can never forget the look on otoosan's face as he was picking up his mother's bones: white as a sheet and lips shaking. I was in shock.
When everybody is finished (me, I passed. I have a bad habit of dropping what I hold with chopsticks. And what if I say "Itadakimasu" out of habit?), the girl picks up what is left herself. As she comes upon a big bone, she asks "May I?" to the father, and then proceeds to break it in two. After that, the urn is already full, so without further asking, she starts crushing the bones with her hand to make more room. The sound is disgusting, everyone looks ready to faint. But boy, it wasn't just over yet. She then takes one last box, and pick up something in it. She proclaims cheerfully: "This is the nose!", and parades it in front of every guest. "This is the lower jaw!", "this is a fragment of the skull!", and so on, until every bone in grand-ma head has been on exhibit. She then puts everything in the urn, and closes it.
As we were leaving, I was feeling unnerved. But I'm not from the family; everyone else around me was a wreck.
Then, another thug with white gloves walked us out: it was time for lunch!
I ain't gonna forget that day soon.
This country will never stop surprising me!