A funeral procession in Japan is an imposing affair. The corpse, in its palanquin or in the modern hearse, is preceded by men carrying large white lanterns on poles, bundles of flowers stuck in bamboo pedestals, stands of artificial flowers, and birds in enormous cages, which are set free at the temples as an act of merit. The priests, friends, and relatives move slowly and sadly to the temple, in which there is a service, then the bier is taken to the crematory by the chief mourner and the near relatives. The ashes are removed the next day to their permanent home in the public crematorium or in the temple burying-ground of the family.
For fifty days after the death incense and lights are kept burning before the tablet of the deceased at his late home, and prayers are offered at the grave for the same length of time. A priest comes from the temple every seventh day to offer incense and prayers with the sorrowing family, who believe that for forty-nine days the spirit of their dead wanders in the dark space that lies between this world and the next. Every seventh day it makes a step forward and is helped by the prayers of loved ones left behind. The sorrowing wife is taught that the spirit cannot tear itself away from its old home and hovers over it, and unless it is absolutely necessary no loving woman would remove from her home until the forty-nine days were past, for fear of giving sorrow to the spirit of her husband, if he did not find her in the place where they had passed together their years of happiness.
The dead are not quickly forgotten in Japan. Memorial services take place the forty-eighth day, the hundredth day, and the first anniversary of the death, and services are held for even fifty years. Lafcadio Hearn expresses the reverence which these people give their loved ones who have gone before them by saying:—
“In this worship we give the dead they are made divine. And the thought of this tender reverence will temper with consolation the melancholy that comes with age to all of us. Never in our Japan are the dead too quickly forgotten; by simple faith they are still thought to dwell among their beloved and their place within the home remains holy. When we pass to the land of shadows we know that loving lips will nightly murmur our names before the family shrine, that our faithful ones will beseech us in their pain and bless us in their joy. We will not be left alone upon the hillside, but loving hands will place before our tablet the fruit and flowers and dainty food that we were wont to like, and will pour for us the fragrant cup of tea or amber rice-wine. Strange changes are coming upon this land, old customs are vanishing, old beliefs are weakening, the thoughts of to-day will not be the thoughts of to-morrow; but of all this we will know nothing. We dream that for us as for our mothers the little lamps will burn on through the generations; we see in fancy the yet unborn, the children of our children’s children, bowing their tiny heads and making the filial obeisance before the tablet that bears our family name.”