Burying the Dead

     The crisis in Japan caused by massive earthquake and devastating tsunami that followed has started to affect more than just economics and day to day life in Japan. With so many dead bodies being uncovered in the debris from the massive wave that struck it's eastern coast, the question now is how to lay the dead to rest.

      Japan is a predominantly Buddhist culture and in the teachings of that doctrine the body is to be burned after death to help with the release of the spirit in the first of three stages that the soul must go through before it can be reborn. However, with the death toll in surpassing 10,000 and still growing the crematoriums in Japan have been overrun with bodies and simply cannot accommodate them all.

 “If we burned all the bodies, it would take a very long time,” said the city spokesman, Takashi Takayama. “The bodies are being kept now in two places, and we’re concerned that they might decompose."

     The storage problem facing Japanese officials has prompted something that is being viewed as necessary but sacrilegious at the same time. The dead are being buried in mass graves in an effort to prevent a stockpile of decomposing corpses due to the growing Que at Japanese crematoriums.

 

    

     Still, the citizens, as with every other aspect of their life right now, have made do with what they have and tried to make the best of things. Much like American funerals where the body is interned to the ground, grievers placed gifts and supplies that the dead would need on their long journey to the afterlife. That being an effort to keep alive some sort of normalcy as these gifts would normally be offered up at a Buddhist shrine as the body was burned. 

     Tragedy's of this magnitude and the coverage the receive tend to focus on the socioeconomic and global implications of such a large player in the world market taking this big of a blow. However, past the initial destruction, the survivors are left behind to make difficult choices of not only self preservation but picking up and starting over. In this instance, the people of the affected areas had to go against their cultural beliefs because the facilities either weren't available or it wasn't practical to carry out a suitable funeral for a Buddhist.