Home Life in Tokyo

by Jukichi Inouye

Unlucky ages—The Japanese cycle—Celebration of ages—Respect for old age—Death—Preparations for the funeral—The wake—The coffin and bier—The funeral procession—The funeral service—Cremation—Gathering the bones—The grave—Prayers for the dead—Return presents—Memorial services—The Shinto funeral.

WHEN the Japanese child has passed through its teens without any serious mishap, its mother is not yet altogether free from anxiety; for there are certain stages of its life at which it is threatened by misfortune. Superstition has fixed certain ages, different according to sex, which must be passed with utmost circumspection if one would escape calamities; these ages are the twenty-fifth, forty-second, and sixty-first years for men and the nineteenth, thirty-third, and thirty-seventh years for women. Here we may note a curious way of counting years commonly practised in Japan; in official reports and legal documents one’s age must be given according to the number of full years and months one has lived, but on other occasions we have a very loose way of computing our ages. Thus, when we say that a man is thirty years old, we do not mean that he is full thirty years of age or that he is in his thirtieth year, but we mean that he has seen thirty solar years of the almanac; that is, if we say in 1910 that he is thirty years old, we mean that he was born some time in 1881, and if his birthday is the New Year’s Day, he would be twenty-nine years old on the same day of 1910, but if it is the thirty-first of December, he would be only twenty-eight years and a day on the first day of 1910, still we speak of him in either case as being thirty years old. A baby born on the last day of the year would be two years old the next morning; its second year according to our mode of computation is, in short, the solar year in which it completes its first twelvemonth. When, therefore, we say, for instance, that a man’s first inauspicious age is his twenty-fifth year, we mean the solar year in which he completes his twenty-fourth year. Thus, the twenty-fourth, forty-first, and sixtieth years of a man and the eighteenth, thirty-second, and thirty-sixth years of a woman are really their climacteric years; and of these the most critical are the forty-first for a man and the thirty-second for a woman, for not only these years themselves, but the years immediately preceding and following each of them also, are considered inauspicious, so that the crisis lasts in either case for three years, during which period men and women refrain as much as possible from acts that may appear like tempting Providence.

The sixtieth year is our grand climacteric, after which a man must be prepared for death at any moment; but this age is treated as one for congratulation and never for sorrow or anxiety, because it completes our cycle of years. To each year is assigned an element of nature, namely, wood, fire, earth, metal, or water, each of which is divided into two kinds, elder and younger, so that there are practically ten elemental signs by which the years are successively designated. Again, there are twelve signs of animals, which are also applied to years; these animals are the rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, ape, fowl, dog, and boar. The years are designated in order after these animals. Since, then, the years are named in succession after the ten elemental and twelve animal signs, the same combination of an elemental and an animal sign recurs every sixty years; the year of the first sign of metal and the sign of the rat, which last coincided with the year 1852, will come again in 1912, that is, sixty years after the other. Our cycle, therefore, comprises sixty years; and a man who has completed this sexagenary cycle is supposed to return to childhood, and often wears red under-garments or red-lined clothes and a red cap after the manner of children. He invites friends and relatives to a dinner to celebrate the occasion.

The next celebration takes place when a man has reached his seventieth year, which is named “a rarity since antiquity,” after the saying that man has seldom since antiquity reached seventy years. The septuagenarian distributes among his friends and relatives large, round, red and white rice-cakes with the character signifying longevity written on them. The seventy-seventh year is celebrated as the fête of joy, because the characters for seventy-seven resemble the character for joy when written in a certain style. On this occasion fans, cloth wrappers, and rice-cakes with the character for joy written on them are distributed among friends and relatives. The eightieth year is celebrated in the same manner as the seventieth; and the celebration of the eighty-eighth year, which is called the fête of rice because of the resemblance of the characters for eighty-eight to the character for that useful cereal. The ninetieth and hundredth years are also celebrated when such opportunities occur.

When a man whose days have exceeded threescore years and ten passes away, the words that his friends come and sometimes utter to his surviving family sound more like congratulation than condolence; it is not, however, as a cynic might suppose, that they congratulate the family upon having ridden itself of a peevish old man who was a damper upon all its innocent enjoyments; it is because they consider it a matter for congratulation that he should have lived to such an age, and since death must come to all, he was to be envied for having succeeded so long in keeping off that unwelcome guest. They often add the wish that similar good fortune may be theirs. The aged as a rule live happily, except such as have no relatives nor any one else to depend upon; and though they may complain of the infirmities that come with years, they never lack sympathy and, so long as they do not make themselves disagreeable, are treated with tenderness by their friends and neighbours. The respect for old age, which is one of the fundamental precepts of Confucian philosophy, is a national characteristic in Japan no less than in China.

When an illness takes a serious turn or an injury is likely to prove fatal, the members of the family are, if they live apart, summoned home and gather around the death-bed. It is considered unfilial, and unfortunate if unintentional, not to be present at a parent’s death, as, for instance, children are warned not to go to bed with their socks on even in the coldest weather since, in that case, they would be unable to attend at their parents’ death-bed. When the patient is in the last article of death, his wife and children put their mouths close to his ear and call him by name; recalled by the dear voices, life flickers for a moment and then goes out. And when the glazed eyes and rigid face show that all is over, his lips are wetted with drops of water; so universal is this custom that the expression “to wet the dying lips with water” has come to signify the tending of a patient in his last illness, as when we say that the wife should be younger than the husband since it is her duty to wet his dying lips with water. The folding screen which is usually set around the head of the bed to soften the daylight in the sick-room, is put upside down. The bed is replaced by a matting, and the quilt is put over the body with its ends reversed so that its foot is over the dead man’s breast; and a white cloth is laid over the face to hide it as its exposure is believed to be an obstacle to the soul’s journey on the road to Hades. A table of plain white wood is set at the head of the bed. At the furthest end is placed a tablet of white wood, on which the Buddhistic name of the deceased is written in Indian ink. The Buddhistic name is the name by which the deceased will be called in prayers and at his temple; he may have received it in his lifetime as many people ask priests of high virtue and reputation to give them such a name, or more often, the superior of the temple where the funeral service is to be held, is communicated with immediately and desired to give the name, which he fixes upon according to the deceased man’s social position, calling, and services to the temple. In front of the tablet are ranged in a line a vase with a branch of the Chinese anise or oldenlandia, a cup of water, and a lamp lighted with rape-oil; all these utensils are made of unglazed earthenware. On the nearest edge is set an earthen censer in which incense-sticks are kept constantly burning, with a box of the sticks beside it. A sword or a knife is placed on or near the corpse to avert the malign influences of evil spirits.

OFFERINGS BEFORE A COFFIN.

Meanwhile, the family shrine is not unfrequently covered to prevent the ingress of the air polluted by the presence of the dead body. The front gate is closed and, in shops and tradesmen’s houses, a reed-screen is hung inside out over the front entrance with a notice of the family bereavement and, often, of the date of the funeral. A similar notice is sent to friends and relatives, and also advertised in the papers. The family temple is notified and a priest comes from it and recites prayers before the tablet. In the evening the body is washed in a tub; first, cold water is poured into the tub and then hot water is added to the required temperature. Superstitious people insist at other times upon pouring hot water into any vessel and then adding cold water even when the reverse process would be more convenient, simply because the latter is the rule at the body-washing. The washing is done by near relatives; sometimes the body is merely wiped with water; and, in the case of a woman, the water is simply poured on the body by inverting the dipper outward with the left hand instead of inward with the right as on other occasions. The head is shaved after washing by touching it with the razor in small patches instead of running the razor continuously which may presage a succession of misfortunes in the family. Next, the grave-clothes are put on; the garment is made by two female relatives sewing with the same piece of thread in opposite directions without knotting the ends. Around the neck is suspended a bag containing Buddhist charms and a small coin or picture of a coin to pay the ferriage on the road to Hades. A rosary and a bamboo staff are also put into the coffin. Mittens, leggings, and sandals are worn, the last being tied with the heel-ends to the toes to signify that the dead shall not return drawn back by love of this world. The wife, if the deceased is her husband, sometimes cuts off her hair and puts it in the coffin in token of her resolve never to marry again. Into the child’s coffin a doll is put to keep it company on its lonely journey to the other world. The coffin is then filled with incense powder or dried leaves of the Chinese anise.