Posted on 10/03/2004 10:08:50 PM PDT by sfwarrior
My mother-in-law passed away last week, and I attended the funeral in Tokyo. The five-day wake was a mind-blower in so many ways. It made me think of just how different Japan is than the United States and how, in so many ways, it is so far superior, both culturally and technologically. We have much to learn.
First, the treatment of death is much different. My mother-in-law's body went directly from the hospital, where she passed away, to the home of her husband. There, the body was placed on the floor in the home's tatami room, a traditional chamber, lined with woven straw matting, that doubles as a living room and an ancestral shrine. There was no coffin; the body, covered, except for the tranquil face, in only a simple white shroud, lay beside the ancestral altar that accents every Japanese home.
Incense was burning, and the deep, droning pattern of the prayers the mourners offered made them sound like Gregorian chants. Relatives, friends, neighbors and the local...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
ping
read later bump
Sorry, they lost me here. Any idiot who thinks the roots of American or Western culture go back only 230 years is not an idiot I need to read.
An equally logical statement would talk about how Japanese roots only go back to 1948(?), since that's when their present governmental system went into effect.
The roots of American society go back a good many thousand years. Most of our recent problems are a result of ignoring those roots.
It's fair to dis our funeral business.
Did it mention the immense popularity of comic book child porn well beyond anything in the US, that is openly read and sold in public?
Or the explosion of young men locking themselves in their rooms for years on end?
Excellent point. They do not have the same challenges as we do - the melting pot.
In addition, they are about to enter a major generational crisis. More people will be over 65 than under soon. This is why they are developing robots. What are we doing about this?
If they're going to keep the old bird around for 5 days, I hope they stopped at the embalmer's somewhere between the hospital and home.
"Adam Sparks is a Bay Area writer."
Adam Sparks is a moron. What he hasn't gotten backwards, he's gotten in a knot.
Most of this hagiography was never more than "generally" true, and is now generally false.
If "cliche swallowing" ever becomes an Olympic event, though, he's a shoo-in for the gold.
You refer to the otaku... Not an explosion necessarily. That's like the foreign press describing America as all cowboys carrying firearms. It's a minority.
Yeah he is, but fairly. A lot of the things he talks about make sense, like the school kids cleaning their own schools. He also leaves out a lot of the problems Japan faces as though it's a utopia. Both countries could learn from each other I think.
Importing Mexicans.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"They can trace their roots back some 3,000 years"
Only if they're going back to Korea and China, because the Yamato culture roots only go back to about the 6th and 7th centuries, when Korean pirates founded what became modern Japan.
They're doing pre-1913 Trad Am better than we are: No warehouses for the old folks; no sympathy for the lazy; little social welfare, etc.
I get the author's point. No dis.
"It's fair to dis our funeral business."
Maybe so, but a Japanese cremation thoroughly creeps me out. Especially when they start crunching the bones down into the urn.
In my mind, the true superior culture is the Japanese American subculture. They have taken the best from Japan and the US and made it into something remarkable. Every Japanese American I've ever met was polite, smart, honest, funny, individualistic, repectful, etc.
I am not Japanese American either.
"No warehouses for the old folks"
No longer true.
"No sympathy for the lazy"
Less true than it used to be.
"little social welfare"
Unless you're an unwed or divorced mother, in which case they'll support you indefinitely.
yo, robusteza!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.