“Gothic Lolita x Coffin” – Experience “entering the coffin” in a pop art coffin and think about life from the viewpoint of the corpse.

As we walked up the escalator at Yokohama Bibule, a shopping building in Yokohama, we suddenly saw a row of coffins lined up in a row in front of us.

However, these coffins were quite unusual. Some were red checkered, some pale green ones were dotted, and the black ones were completely gothic lolita with fluttering frills. They blend in so well with the pop and fashionable atmosphere of the floor that it is said, “If you are looking for Gothic Lolita fashion, Biblé is the place to go.”

“GRAVE TOKYO,” a pop-up store open until July 23, is a general goods brand launched by designer Mikako Fuse in 2003. GRAVE TOKYO manufactures and sells coffins and urns with a high design quality that “makes you want to be in it. The coffins on display here cost 275,000 yen each.

I have lost friends and acquaintances who were designers, and I have attended their funerals many times. After all, families who have just lost a loved one probably don’t have time to think about funerals. In many cases, it was a very ordinary funeral.

As someone who knew the deceased, I sometimes wondered if this was the style of funeral that the person who had been particular about the design of his life wanted to have. I thought that if it were me, I would not like it, so in ’15 I started designing bone jars,” said Fuse.

Some parents who have lost a child consult with us, saying that they wanted to send their child off with a character they loved. However, he said that no character-designed funeral goods have yet been produced.

“However, In this era when Gucci is collaborating with Doraemon, realization is not far off in the future,” says Fuse. With the current wave of graveside services as people can no longer attend their parents’ graves in rural areas, and with more and more women saying that they do not want to be buried with their husbands, the shape of funerals may be changing.

At this pop-up store, Fuse is also holding a “hands-on coffin-making workshop,” which he usually holds at his atelier in Koto-ku, Tokyo. What does it mean to experience a coffin?

Fuse says, “People live their lives toward the goal of death, but they usually don’t think about that goal. If we could have more dreams and hopes about the goal of life, our present life would be more fulfilling. When we actually enter the coffin, we reexamine death and life once again to see if we would have any regrets if we were to be burnt to death.”

At any rate, I participated. The first thing in the workshop was to pair up with another participant and be asked the question, “Who are you?” and then you are asked the question, “Who are you?

Who are you? I am a man,” “I am 50 years old,” “I was born in Tokyo,” “I am a writer for the web,” “I like to drink alcohol,” ……. After five minutes of answering, I felt like I was spewing out a lot of personal information and had to squeeze out more. I wondered if this was some kind of inventory of myself. The other person writes it down.

The next task was to write a eulogy from someone who attended your funeral. The eulogy could be from anyone or a fictitious person. This is another conundrum. For the time being, I decided to write a eulogy from my brother, but it turned out to be an embarrassing one, in which he blamed me for all the wrongs I had done to his family.

However, it seems that this kind of work does not necessarily require 100% exposure of one’s private life. I did expose a lot of my private life.

And finally, the coffin. The coffin was designed based on Dutch wallpaper. The size of the coffin was said to be 6 feet, but it was so small that when I stretched out my legs, my head got stuck and it was a little cramped. The participants and staff put flowers into the coffin one after another, decorating my “body” as they said, “Thank you for your hard work, Mr. XX,” and “Please take a good rest.”

Then it was time to say goodbye. The lid of the coffin was closed, and the face was also closed, making it completely dark.

Not only is it dark, but the sound also disappears. In the pitch blackness, I hear eulogies coming from far away and gossip about me based on the information I had written at the beginning.

I wonder if he drinks a lot over there,” he said, “I hear he likes to travel a lot, and he used to go to Thailand all the time.”

Before the workshop, Mr. Fuse also said, “Japanese people are shy when they are praised.

“Japanese people tend to be shy and humble when they receive compliments, but because they are dead, no matter how much praise they receive, they cannot be humble or deny it. Some people receive praise from all kinds of people and can live 10 years on those words alone. So a prenatal funeral or a casket ceremony really boosts their sense of self-esteem.”

It’s not much of a compliment, but it’s a strange feeling, though it’s a rare experience and a bit uplifting, to hear everyone in the room talking about me one way or the other. Moreover, since it is pitch dark and I hear them from far away, I feel like I have really come to the other side of the world. I also feel like I don’t want to really die like this.

After a while, the lid of the coffin was knocked on, and the three-minute coffin-entry experience was over.

The other three participants entered the casket one after another. Some of them were so moved that they started to cry during the reading of the eulogy. Like the presentation of flowers to the parents at a wedding, it is said that the more ceremonial the event is, the easier it is to open the lid on emotions.

Those who have participated so far say they feel refreshed, inspired to live life carefully until death, and warmed by the interest people have shown in them. One woman who participated on the day said, “I felt as if I were in my mother’s belly.

The workshop will be held on the 21st as well. Perhaps it is good to have such an opportunity to think a little about death, which is something we usually pay no attention to.