Mortuary Rites in Japan: Editors' Introduction

Abstract

A r e m a r k a b l e s t u d y appeared in France in 1907, a work that informs the essays in this special issue on "Mortuary Rites in Japan" in funda­ mental ways. Written by the sociologist Robert Hertz while he was young, it begins with the following observations: We all believe we know what death is because it is a familiar event and one that arouses intense emotion. It seems both ridiculous and sacrilegious to question the value of this inti­ mate knowledge and to wish to apply reason to a subject where only the heart is competent. Yet questions arise in connection with death which cannot be answered by the heart because the heart is unaware of them. Even for the biologist death is not a simple and obvious fact; it is a problem to be scientifically investigated. But where a human being is concerned the physiological phenomena are not the whole of death. To the organic event is added a com­ plex mass of beliefs， emotions and activities which give it its distinctive character. We see life vanish but we express this fact by the use of special language: it is the soul, we say, which departs for another world where it will join its forefathers. The body of the deceased is not regarded like the carcass of some animal: specific care must be given to it and a correct burial; not merely for reasons of hygiene but out of moral obligation. Finally, with the occurrence of death a dismal period begins for the living during which special duties are imposed upon them. (H e r t z 1960， p. 27) Hertz was not a romantic. Trained in the sociological methods of Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss， he utilized Indonesian (of the Malay Archipelago) funerary practices as his exemplary case, for it provided a limited set of comparative data upon which to base a more