"In a remote area of Awaji Island, "the grave of the graves" (ohaka-no-haka) houses the material artifacts of Japan's discarded death rights. In the past, the Japanese dead would be transformed into ancestors through years of ritual offerings in the home at Buddhist altars called butsudan. But in twenty-first-century Japan, this intergenerational system of care is rapidly collapsing due to falling birthrates, secularization, and economic downturn. And so, down the mountainside, wooden Buddhist statues and altars burn on ...
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"In a remote area of Awaji Island, "the grave of the graves" (ohaka-no-haka) houses the material artifacts of Japan's discarded death rights. In the past, the Japanese dead would be transformed into ancestors through years of ritual offerings in the home at Buddhist altars called butsudan. But in twenty-first-century Japan, this intergenerational system of care is rapidly collapsing due to falling birthrates, secularization, and economic downturn. And so, down the mountainside, wooden Buddhist statues and altars burn on carefully tended bonfires, displaced from their domestic sites of honor. Though once present in nearly every Japanese home, butsudan are increasingly spurned by younger generations. Through the lens of this domestic altar, Gould asks: What happens when religious technology becomes obsolete? In noisy carpentry studios, flashy funeral showrooms, the messy houses of widowers, and the cramped kitchens where women prepare memorial feasts, Gould traces the butsudan alongside the Buddhist lifecycle, exploring how they are made, circulate within religious and funerary economies, come to mediate intimate exchanges between the living and the dead, fall into disuse, and, maybe, are remade. Gould suggests how this form might be reborn for the modern world: 3D-printed altars inspired by sleek Scandinavian design and new materials that embrace impermanence and decay, such as in "green" burial. Read against a long tradition of intergenerational memorialization, Japan's contemporary deathscape offers a case study in a new kind of necrosociality, based in transitory experiences that seek to disentangle the world of the living from that of the dead"--
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 208 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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Fine. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 208 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
