Explore everyday life in Japan

Pet Cemeteries

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My wife’s family’s cat of nearly sixteen years passed away last Friday night and on Sunday morning we had a funeral for it.

To my surprise, many of the rituals and superstitions involved in the ceremony were the same as those that are performed on the bodies of people.

A small wake was held at a crematorium where a Buddhist priest burned incense and chanted prayers before an icon of a god. As he did so, he occasionally hit the edge of a metal singing bowl with a wooden mallet and its deep sound reverberated powerfully through the small room where we, immediate family members and I, stood bowed in silence, our hands held together in prayer with a string of round prayer beads hung over our left hands.

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When the priest finished reciting prayers, we approached the altar and proceeded in ritual the same way we would have had the ceremony been for a person. One at a time, we bowed, took a small pinch of granulated incense from a bowl, brought it near the bridges of our noses while slightly bowing our heads, and sprinkled it over a small flame. We did this three times. After each of us had completed this part of the ritual, the cat’s body was moved to a separate room where we were all allowed to say our final goodbye before it was cremated.

During the cremation, comments were made about the weather. It was a warm, sunny day with mostly blue skies which was interpreted to mean that Miu had been ready to leave us when she passed away and was not troubled by her own passing. However, despite the mostly blue skies and fair weather, scattered rain drops managed to fall which lead some members of my wife's family to claim that while Miu had been ready to leave this world, she was saddened about having to part with us.

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In Japan, the weather on one’s funeral day is supposed to be indicative of how the one feels about their own death. If one is accepting and willing to enter the afterlife, the weather will be nice. If one is tormented about their passing, the weather will reflect that torment.

Outside, as we waited under blue skies and scattered raindrops, cars periodically pulled into the parking lot of the crematorium. Individuals, pairs, and groups of people exited from them carrying candles, incense, flowers, and sometimes treats and cans of food to leave beneath the walls of plaques and at the bases of wooden markers that surrounded a large outdoor altar next to the crematorium.Before this outdoor altar, in the same way they would before the grave of a friend or a family member, these people all left flowers, lit candles, burned incense, put their hands together, bowed, and either communicated with their pet's spirit or prayed for its wellbeing.

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Image Credits: All images in this post are original.

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This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting regular updates about life in Japan, please consider following me at @boxcarblue. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.

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