Killing Time in a Cemetery

Indulge me if you will:

Step 1 - Try to imagine half the films Woody Allen made between 1980 and 1995.
Step 2 - Now try to imagine me cast in the Woody Allen roles.

If you have managed to do that, you now have a fairly accurate mental picture of my weekly sessions with Dr. T.

This week we talked about cemeteries.

We also touched on Tiger Woods, Scrabble (my mother), typical family menus on Burr Street (my mother), the milkman with a hook for a hand, calcium, my brother Dave's dietary habits, One-a-Day multiple vitamins, the Guinness World Record for stretching a can of tomato soup (you-know-who), the Battle of the Bulge, my parents' courtship, malpractice insurance in Japan, the oversupply of lawyers in the United States, Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II, cancer, and how Japan's power structure has evolved over the past 700 or so years, but I have an abundance of cemetery pictures from my visit to Kaminoge this week so I'll try to stick to that topic.

A Tokyo tour guide back in 2006 had provided a general explanation of those tall prayer boards you can see in some of these pictures. I knew descendants of the deceased pay priests to inscribe prayers on those boards but I did not realize they are expected to do so every year for 50 years, although very few people outlast their parents by 50 years. (I think I just heard Martin Luther turning over in his grave.)

Several generations of a family share the same gravesite. Dr. T's parents and brother, for instance, are interred with his paternal grandparents in the town where Dr. T was born. He used to visit their graves and purchase prayers every year. Now that he lives in Yokohama he is only able to visit the graves every five years and he is obliged to pay the priest to write five prayers for each family member to cover the years he did not visit. (I almost snorted tea through my nose when Dr. T pantomimed dragging a load of lumber across a cemetery.)

Dr. T and his wife do not have any children so who will put prayer sticks on their graves when the time comes? They have several options, including two traditional options promoted by priests:

• formally adopt a relative's child who will assume the obligation in exchange for inheriting the estate, or
• transfer the obligation to a priest who will be happy to write prayers every year for about $100,000 in advance (American lawyers call this a 'retainer').

These days many Japanese, including Dr. T, raise an eyebrow or two at the choices spelled out by the priests. Dr. T is thinking about asking a cousin who lives near the cemetery to take care of his prayer sticks. Some people are avoiding the prayer stick quandary entirely by directing their ashes be scattered.

It seems I've managed to spend my knowledge of Japanese cemeteries much faster than my supply of pictures so I guess I'm going to have to see what I can find out about the brother who died.