To modernise its mortuary services, Bansho-ji Temple in Nagoya has constructed a mortuary that looks more like a trendy bar than a place to memorialize the dead. Like many Buddhist temples in Japan, Bansho-ji has its own charnel house, which contains “drawers” for families to store ashes of dead relatives. Yet this sixteenth-century temple has broken new ground in funeral services by commissioning Tokyo architect Masuo Fujimura to design a contemporary “Crystal Palace” (Suishoden) charnel house on the third floor of their traditional temple building.

 

Using the latest technology, crystal glass, stainless steel and LEDs, Fujimura conceived a futuristic mortuary that swirls with luminescent lights. He explained that there are several corporations that fund the charnel house, and the temple simply supplies the building. “It’s complicated,” he mused, “because one of the companies that supported the temple’s plans for the Crystal Palace deals in LEDs from China, and another deals with crystal.”

 

Glass lockers built into walls glow in blue, yellow, red, green and gold light patterns. According to Fujimura, the five colours “represent space, light, sunset, earth and sunlight.” Small Buddhas are carefully hand-carved into the drawers, and when illuminated, appear to float in space. The result is mesmerizing, and almost kitsch, as the walls dazzle with shiny statues. 

 

At the entrance, a crystal curtain hangs over the lobby as a divine canopy (tengai). “The concept” Fujimura said, “is that the curtain represents the Milky Way and the demarcation between the afterlife and the present world”. In Japanese Buddhist temples, the canopy is suspended above Buddhas or bodhisattvas (compassionate saviour figures), and usually made of gilded wood or bronze.

 

An identification system using cutting-edge technology ensures that only persons with identity cards can access the chamber containing the remains of the deceased family member. After swiping the cards on sensor readers to enter the charnel house, the designated drawer begins to glow a soft gold and is surrounded by a halo of white light that expands in and out in concentric circles. The name of the deceased will appear on the display for two minutes.

 

Part of the reason for this modernisation is that in Japanese cities, traditional graves with stone monuments and crypts have become too expensive. The burial rites depicted in Departures (Okuribito), winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2009, give audiences a rare glimpse of traditional funerals. After losing his job as a cellist in an orchestra, the protagonist of the film becomes an undertaker in a countryside funeral parlour. By learning the trade, he rediscovers old funerary rituals, and in the process embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

 

But in contemporary Japan, death is less romantic. To bury their dead, families pay exorbitant prices for a funeral, making Japan one of the most expensive places to die. Space, or the lack of it, has a lot to do with the price tag. It’s almost impossible to find a burial plot in Tokyo. Funeral practices were commercialized during the country’s post-war reconstruction and rapid modernization.

 

Some funeral homes reputedly overcharge grieving families reluctant to barter the price of sending a loved one to the afterlife. In her book, The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan, Hikaru Suzuki wrote how funeral homes, traditionally a trusted community-based practise, have adopted a “corporate structure” to be profitable, and “the difference between funeral homes and companies is slight nowadays.”

 

To offset skyrocketing costs, families are opting for charnel houses. These miniature graves are more affordable and efficient, especially since 99% of Japanese families now cremate their dead. To many, cremation not only purges impure deaths – believing a person dies once in the hospital and again during cremation – but also appeases malevolent spirits. This burial trend has led to the steep decline in reliance on graveyards, and has made charnel houses indispensable.

 

According to traditional Buddhist belief, the dead stay in an after-life limbo for thirty-three years, and families only pay for a drawer for this duration. In this context, the Buddhist belief in the circularity of life makes good business sense for the funeral industry. The turnover allows funeral homes to adjust their rates to inflation, and for families to not be bound to an eternity of mortuary fees.

 

The Bansho-ji Crystal Palace is emblematic of the postmodern melding of the ancient and futuristic in today’s Japan. Fujimura’s kitschy design of a sacred space illustrates the Japanese ability to seamlessly integrate contemporary and traditional aspects of life. The vision of a priest praying to Buddha in a disco-like environment – without participants in the memorial service sensing any spiritual or aesthetic contradiction – proves that technology can upgrade the present without replacing the past. The bereaved relatives are transfixed by the non-materiality of the light display while recollecting the physical passing of the dearly departed.

 

 

For information on Bansho-ji’s Crystal Palace click here.

For information on Fujimura Design Studio click here