In Accordance with the Increasing Number of Foreigners…At the Forefront of the “Deathbed Business” Workers Changing the Image of Death [Close Reporting on the Frontlines].

The “deathbed business,” work related to the final stages of life

Death comes to everyone. However, the concept and perception of death have certainly changed over time. How do “workers” involved in the final stages of life perceive the increasingly diverse forms of death?

One such worker is Shuhei Matsuki, 44, president of Toudaiya, a company in Tachikawa, Tokyo, that transports the bodies and remains of foreign nationals and provides funeral services. During our interview, the phone rang with requests for his services, and we were impressed to see him hurriedly saying, “We are now in the process of sending the body of a Senegalese national back to his home country.

The number of foreigners who die in Japan is increasing every year. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s “Vital Statistics,” 9051 people met their final days in Japan in 2011. The Japanese government has set a goal of increasing the number of foreign visitors to Japan to 60 million by ’30. The demand for funeral homes that cater to foreigners, like Lighthouse, will further increase.

When a foreigner dies in Japan, there are various requests from the bereaved family, such as whether only the remains should be sent to the home country or whether the body should be transported as is.

For example, the total cost of sending a corpse from Tokyo to South Korea ranges from 800,000 yen to 1 million yen. We try to keep the cost as low as possible, but some bereaved families still find it difficult to pay,” said President Matsuki.

The company’s work environment is unique in that the company works according to the local time of the receiving country in order to coordinate and communicate with the country where the body is to be received.

President Matsuki first entered the funeral industry 24 years ago.

The day after graduating from high school, he jumped into a part-time job at a resort on Miyakojima Island, and before he knew it, a year had passed. He felt that if he continued living like this, he might not be able to work properly, and he found a job in a newspaper insert as a funeral director specializing in police work.

He found a job at a funeral home specializing in police work. Eventually, he moved to a company that handled hearse services and came into contact with various forms of funeral services, such as scattering ashes at sea. One day, he began to wonder how he should deal with the increasing number of foreign nationals and their families.

Not only do people from other countries have different religions and customs, but many of them wish to have the body returned to their home country. For example, in Islam, it is basic to bury the body as soon as possible, but in Japan, cremation and burial within 24 hours is not permitted by law, and there are only a few places where burial is possible. In order to understand the funeral cultures of different countries, I learned everything from body washing (a ceremony to purify the deceased’s body) to mourning rituals,” he said.

In fact, the Lighthouse frequently receives requests for burials in Japan. Many Muslims, Christians, Jews, and other religions wish to have burial ceremonies for religious reasons.

It was in December last year that I witnessed the burial of an Iranian man at a certain place in the Kanto region. After washing his body, he was wrapped in a white cloth called kefen and carried to the cemetery. The body was lowered into a grave pit about 2 meters deep and covered with soil. When the hole was filled, a bouquet of flowers was placed and the attendees prayed around the hole.

One of the attendees, an Afghan man, pleaded, “We must not leave the graves for religious reasons.

We must have burial for religious reasons. However, there are very few places in Japan where burial is possible. We live in Japan and pay a lot of taxes. I hope that Japan will consider the needs of foreigners like us who need to be buried in the ground.

In today’s Japan, where more than 99% of the population is cremated, the acceptance of burial is a difficult issue. However, with more than 300,000 Muslims said to be living in Japan today, urgent action is needed.

Like a lighthouse illuminating the darkness, we want to be a ray of light to illuminate the sorrows of a foreign country,” said Mr. Matsuki in his closing remarks.

Realization of “elastic skin

In today’s super-aging society, it is not unusual for people in urban areas to have to wait up to 10 days for cremation.

Until now, the preservation of a corpse has been handled by spreading dry ice over the coffin, but the company’s “Persona” refrigerator for preserving a corpse lowers the freezing point by subdividing the water molecules inside the body and also sterilizes and deodorizes them, making it possible to maintain the body for more than a month without freezing it. Because the body is not frozen, but rather kept in a semi-frozen state, the skin is prevented from darkening and its elasticity is preserved.

President Sakaguchi has a unique background, having been involved in the manufacture and sales of TVs and washing machines at Sharp before becoming a tax accountant. The development of Persona began more than 10 years ago, when he noticed that dry ice was not used in the cooling systems in the fresh fish section of supermarkets.

After conducting a variety of research, he found that “it is difficult to keep a corpse clean for a long period of time with dry ice alone” and “many people feel resistance to embalming using embalming fluid,” and he worked to develop a new device that had never been used before.

Akihiro Sugimoto, 58, president of Katsunogyo Ceremony, a funeral service company in Kunitachi City, Tokyo, which has installed Persona, said, “The skin condition of the corpse is good,” and the response from the customers has been positive. President Sakaguchi said, “I hope we can invite distant relatives to come and say a slow goodbye.

Departures” to the World

In the area of body care, the work of nokanshin-shi (coffin-maker) has been attracting attention since the movie “Departures” was released in 2008. Departures and Departure Academy” in Chuo-ku, Tokyo, was established to systematize the training of nokanshin-shi, a craftsman-like world in which nokanshin-shi learn from their seniors. The head of the academy, Koki Kimura, 36, who has watched his father, a nokanshin-shi (coffin-maker), at work since he was a child, says, “The relationship between master and apprentice is not the same.

If techniques are handed down only through the relationship between master and apprentice, different methods of coffin delivery will be used in different regions. For the bereaved family, the coffin will be delivered only once. We thought that systematic knowledge and education were necessary, so we established a school in 2001.

The academy offers a wide range of curriculum, including not only practical skills such as casket etiquette, makeup techniques, and dressing, but also medical knowledge, religious etiquette, and theory of grief care (care for the bereaved). To date, more than 200 students have graduated from the school and are active in funeral homes and related industries nationwide.

There is a growing number of young people who want to become nokanshi practitioners, and some of them enter the school right after graduating from high school. Many of them enter the academy because they have experienced a funeral for a family member and think, ‘I want to send my loved one off in such a beautiful way.

Some of the academy’s graduates are from overseas. Yue Pei-rong, 31, from China, studied sociology and clinical mortality at a Japanese graduate school, and as an extension of her studies, she entered the academy to “gain experience in the funeral service field.

In China, funeral halls are often under government control, and it is common for the deceased to be prepared for the funeral out of sight of the bereaved family. In Japan, however, nokanshi (coffin) masters perform yukan (perfuming), dressing, and makeup in front of the bereaved family, thus cherishing the last moments of the deceased’s life. This is a point that interested Yue greatly.

In Japan, the bereaved family members observe the coffin and participate in the process of making the deceased look beautiful. In this process, it seemed as if the feelings stiffened by grief were being untied. I would like to spread this kind of grief care in China.”

Ms. Yue is currently involved in funeral support, translation, seminars, and other activities for Chinese residents in Japan, making use of her studies in Japan, and is also working with personnel involved in funeral services in China to serve as a bridge to a new culture.

There are also signs of change in the way the deceased are dressed. The “Sakura Sakura” company, which is operated by Luna Co., Ltd. produces an ending dress that is as glamorous as a wedding gown.

Masako Nakano, the representative of the company, was originally involved in the apparel business, but when her father passed away, she was shocked to see him dressed in a white Buddhist robe and sandals, as if he were a different person.

He said, “My father, who loved fashion, was dressed all in inorganic white with no room to choose an outfit to go to the other world. Seeing him like that, I wondered if this was really the right thing to do,” Nakano said.

He was also shocked when his daughter was scared at her father’s funeral, saying, “Grandpa, you look like a ghost. She felt keenly that “there should be more choices at the scene of sending off one’s loved ones. He planned the ending dress.

Until now, white sutra mail has been the most common way to dress for death. Ms. Nakano’s ending dresses are diverse, including those decorated with lace and floral patterns, and those that are a mix of Western and Japanese attire.

There are outfits for men as well as women,” she says. We want to make sure that the scene of death is not only scary,” says Nakano.

The ever-changing style of funerals is a mirror of the way we live and our values. Workers in the end-of-life business continue to constantly face the needs of the times.

From the April 4/11, 2025 issue of “FRIDAY