Since 2006, deaths have exceeded births in Japan. In Being Dead Otherwise, Anne Allison demonstrates that anxieties about these demographic changes transcend life: people fear disconnection after death for themselves and their ancestors but are also forging new connections as they innovate in the face of such fears. Drawing on her previous scholarship, Allison investigates the rapidly changing “deathscape” in Japan, revealing how concern about the future of the nation includes reimagining memorialization and deathcare in the present: the realities of “being dead, otherwise,” when an increasing number of Japanese have no heirs or when nearest kin's refusal to care for the dead means leaving such care to be managed by the self while alive or by the state, private enterprise, and even robots after death.
Chapter 1 traces Buddhist, Shinto, and Confucian antecedents to contemporary mortuary and funerary practices. Allison reviews corpse care, the work of moving the...
