From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

by Caitlin Doughty

That is to say, we consider death rituals savage only when they don’t match our own.

In 2017, an NPR investigation into funeral homes “found a confusing, unhelpful system that seems designed to be impenetrable by average consumers, who must make costly decisions at a time of grief and financial stress.”

We need to reform our funeral industry, introducing new practices that aren’t so profit-oriented, and that do more to include the family.

After the cremation, a fragmented (but complete) skeleton is pulled from the machine. Western crematories pulverize these bones into powdery ash, but the Japanese traditionally do not. The family walks into the shūkotsu-shitsu, or ash/bone collecting room, where the skeleton of their loved one awaits. The family are handed pairs of chopsticks, one made of bamboo, one made of metal. The chief mourner begins with the feet, picking up bones with the chopsticks and placing them in the urn. Other family members join in and continue up the skeleton. The skull will not fit into the urn intact, so the cremator might intervene to break it up into smaller bone fragments using a metal chopstick. The final bone, the hyoid (the horseshoe-shaped bone underneath the jaw) is placed in the urn last.