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Understanding Japanese society through life after death

Abstract In this article based on extensive ethnographic interviewing of eighty-six Japanese adults, I analyze the different ways in which they understand life after death, and consider the societal implications of their views. I examine senses of life after death as based in communion with departed family members as linked to practices of ancestor veneration and ideologies of Japaneseness. I consider heaven/hell or reincarnation as linked, through the idea of impartial judgment of the individual, to meritocracy and the examination system. I examine agnosticism and relativism in senses of life after death as linked to the idea that individual freedom of choice may exist in the next world if not necessarily within the constraints of this Japanese world. I examine disbelief in any realm beyond the grave, and the symbolic immortality pursued through ‘leaving something behind’, whether one's creative works, one's children, or one's return to nature, with all the societal implications these different pursuits hold. This article's analysis demonstrates, through its ethnographic exploration of senses of life after death, the linkages between realms of imagination in today's Japan and the different potentially emerging social orders of tomorrow's Japan.