Japan’s expensive funerals and declining birth rates are transforming ancestral traditions

Many Japanese are rethinking whether to continue with costly burial traditions. Arrow/DigitalVision via Getty Image

Whenever I drive amid the mazelike bustle of Tokyo’s Shuto Expressway, where approximately 1 million vehicles transit daily, I see billboard advertisements for all manner of businesses: dentists, hotels, car and tire companies, and affordable funerals. Lots and lots of funerals.

For generations, Japan’s funeral system rested on family and community networks and Buddhist temples. Together, they sustained the traditional system of burials into the 20th century.