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00:00Hey guys, funerals and memorials in Japan do vary a little bit in how people choose
00:09to do them, but usually they are Buddhist, a Buddhist ceremony or ceremonies and usually
00:18quite a long complicated thing.
00:22I already made a video about that some time ago, so if you're interested in that, it'll
00:28be on the how-to playlist, because it explains a lot of the ceremony that if you go to a
00:33funeral, what you have to do, you know, taking money and envelopes and all the other things
00:38you have to do.
00:39This video is a little bit more specific.
00:42This is specifically talking about what they have, which we'd probably call in English
00:47a wake, which usually when a person passes away here, they will usually have like an
01:00open coffin type thing that they'll sometimes have in the house or sometimes at a funeral
01:07center, so during that time people can come and visit and say goodbye, and usually it's
01:21an all day thing.
01:23So I'll tell you, why I'm telling you about this now is because I went to one yesterday
01:28and it was actually a guy, a very old friend of mine from Australia, same age as me, and
01:38he actually took his own life, so as you can imagine it was a pretty emotional day, but
01:48it was really striking for a few reasons I'll get to, I want to try and explain it because
01:53I think it's really interesting because at first the Japanese way of doing it can be
02:02quite confronting to people that come from some different cultures, so, sorry I'm sort
02:09of a bit vague on this aren't I guys, I'm just trying, it's a difficult subject to address
02:13and particularly today, it's probably a bit early, but I wanted to address it while it
02:18was happening sort of thing, because yesterday it was so striking, there was a few things
02:24that were really striking, so what they usually do is they usually put the person out in an
02:29open coffin usually in the house or in a funeral center, and usually it's an all day, and depending
02:37on how important or famous the person is, how long that goes on for, so just for a normal
02:44person it might just be one day, so that they're laid out from 8 o'clock in the morning
02:51till 7 o'clock at night or something, to give friends and family a chance to come and see
02:58them and say goodbye to them, and also to be with, to show respect to their family and
03:05to be with the other mourners, and so for just a normal person that just might be one
03:12day, or someone who's sort of more important or famous that will have more people coming,
03:17they might do it for a couple of days to give everybody a chance to come, and then they'll
03:22have a funeral, and usually the funeral itself is not terribly long, it might only be an
03:27hour, so in our case, our friend, his funeral's today, and it's going to go for about an hour,
03:34and then they'll go to the crematorium, because in Japan everybody is cremated, so they brought
03:40it into law some time ago, that you don't have an option here anymore, everybody's cremated,
03:47so what I want to talk about was, obviously yesterday was really hard, because you know,
03:56very old friend, friend for 40 years actually, and he's Australian, but he lives here in
04:01Japan, and about 45 minutes from where I live, so we're really close, probably I've mentioned
04:08him, I know I've mentioned him, not by name, but I've mentioned things that he's said and
04:13done in previous videos, and you know, he's been a big part of my life for 40 years, and
04:20so obviously, you know, the fact that he's gone, and the fact that he's gone at his own
04:24hand, makes it worse, you know, anybody who's experienced that, you know, it's hard when
04:31you lose anybody, but when you lose anybody who's chosen to go, it just brings lots of
04:36complicated feelings for everybody, you know, all complicated feelings, if only I'd done
04:42this, or maybe if I'd spent more time with him, or maybe if, you know, maybe if I'd listened
04:47to what he said, or maybe if I'd, I don't know, you go through, it's inevitable, you
04:51know, and the people there yesterday, I was hearing a bit of that sort of stuff from them
04:56too, you know, it's sort of inevitable, it's a terribly complicated thing, when someone
05:01takes their own life like that, you know, I'll just say, I'll just say this once, maybe,
05:09it strikes me that people have a choice to take their own life if they want to, but it
05:13strikes me as an extremely selfish thing, this is the second of these wakes and funerals
05:20that I've been to, that was by someone who took their own life, the other one was an
05:24uncle, who'd got to 65 years old, and he retired, and he was a bit lost, and he took
05:32his own life, because he was lost, you know, Japanese guy who suddenly doesn't have a job
05:36anymore because he retired, was sort of lost, he didn't have any hobbies, and he just, so
05:41he took his own life, and you know, it struck me both times how devastated everybody was,
05:46not just by losing the person, but by the person who chose to go themselves, and it
05:50just strikes me that people have a choice to do that if they want to, but it's an extremely
05:54selfish thing to do, you know, whatever problem that they're having, you know, it solves that
06:00for them, because they're gone, but what it does is it leaves behind a whole heap of problems
06:05for all the other people that they've left behind, you know, the people that are closest
06:08to them have got massive problems as a result, and everybody around them is affected, and
06:14there's a ripple effect where lots of people are going to be affected by that forever,
06:19I'm not going to think of my old friend, or see pictures of him, or be reminded of him
06:23at all, forever now, without thinking about the fact that he took his own life, it's just
06:29not, you're not going to be able to separate from it, and I know my wife's the same with
06:33her uncle, you know, her uncle's the guy that took his own life, and she's the same with
06:38him and his family, she can't think about him or the family without thinking about that,
06:42you know, so that person in that moment's taken away their problem, but they've left
06:47a whole bunch of problems for other people, anyway, that wasn't supposed to be the video,
06:52but you know, it's true, anybody who's watching this who's thought about doing it, just be
06:59aware of what it's going to do to the people you leave behind, it's a terribly selfish
07:03thing to do, it really is, and it was interesting yesterday when talking to people, that now
07:09and again, people are being very careful what they said, but there were a couple of times
07:14where people said things that were sort of along those lines, about it being a selfish
07:19thing, or about how much harm it's done to the people around him, how devastated these
07:25people were, you know, so, you know, keep in mind, if you do that, if you do take your
07:33own life, you've got a right to do it, but you're going to leave behind a whole heap
07:35of devastated people who are going to think that you're selfish and that you've done them
07:40a lot of harm, you know, because that's inevitably how you feel, and that was the vibe yesterday,
07:46but, again, it's not supposed to be the video, I shouldn't have made this video today, should
07:51I? The video's supposed to be about, when I was driving there yesterday, I didn't want
07:56to go, I had so many feelings, emotions going through me, I didn't want to go, I knew it
08:02would be open casket, I didn't want to see him, I just had so much emotion going on,
08:07I just couldn't deal with it, you know, and didn't want to go, and I was driving there
08:11really slowly, and just didn't want to be going there, and knew I had to sit there for
08:16a few hours, and just didn't want to be there, and he had two sons that were only in their
08:21early twenties, and a girlfriend, and an ex-wife, and all sorts of people in his life that really
08:29cared about him, and I knew that it would be there, and I knew that it would be devastated,
08:33and so I really, really, really didn't want to go, right? But, and this is the point of
08:37the video, when I went in there, the atmosphere was really, really good, right? And those
08:47of us who've come from cultures where we don't normally have open caskets, it can be pretty
08:53full on when you first, you know, first are confronted with it, you know, I've been to,
08:58I don't know, eight, nine, ten of these things over the years for my old martial arts teachers,
09:03and for family members, in-laws, you know, grandparents on the in-laws side, and aunts
09:09and uncles on the in-laws side, and all sorts of people over the years, you know, and it's
09:16still a little bit confronting when you've grown up in a culture where you don't normally
09:20see dead people, and you don't normally talk to dead people, because what they usually
09:24do is, you go into a room, and yesterday's affair was not as big, I've been to some really
09:31big ones before, I had a martial arts master who had a really big affair, and it was a
09:36big room with lots of chairs and lots of people, and it's very formal, you know, that other
09:40video we talked about, everybody wears a black suit, everybody, male and female, everyone
09:45wears a black suit, and it's very formal, and very, as you can imagine, it's very sort
09:51of solemn, but, what inevitably happens is, you're there all day, and they have a room,
09:59sometimes they'll have a separate room where you can go and eat and drink, yesterday, it
10:04was one room that wasn't really big, and it had a table and lots of chairs, and my friend
10:10was at the end of the room, and opened casket, and they actually laid out his favourite clothes
10:18on the top of the casket, and clothes that he likes to wear, and so, when you walk in
10:26and you go over, and there's a Buddhist stuff that you do, I've talked about that in the
10:30other video, burning incense, and so you do that sort of stuff, and then, there he is,
10:36you know, and they often talk to the person who's lying there, and then you sit down at
10:42the table, and they've got food and drink, and you sit at the table and you drink and
10:46you eat and you talk, and at first, you know, the way they do it, it seems a bit, it can
10:55be, feel a bit too much, you know, for those of us who used to come for a place where there's
10:58a closed coffin, and there's a minister, and people sing songs, you know, if you're a Christian,
11:04and you know, hymns, and then the person's buried in the ground, and that's the end of
11:08it, you know, and if you've come from that, the Japanese thing can seem a bit much at
11:13first, but it's really therapeutic, for a few reasons, probably, I mean, one is that
11:19Japanese people never like to show negative emotion, which includes crying and being sad,
11:25right, now of course, at these things, you know, there's always somebody crying, and
11:30there's always someone with tears in their eyes, and you know, there's always that, but
11:34they try hard to be, not as much stoic as positive, you know, and, you know, they try
11:43and they tell funny stories, and, you know, even his sons, even his sons were telling
11:48funny stories about how, you know, one of them had been crying on his jackets recently
11:53and said he wanted one of his jackets, and my friend wouldn't let the young fella have
11:58his jacket, and this guy said yesterday, well now I'm gonna get the jacket, right, and they're
12:03sort of laughing at that, and they're laughing about it, and I think it's partly the fact
12:08that, because for sure everybody was crying when they were having quiet time at home,
12:13you know, but in this group, they're just being positive, and talking about positive
12:18things about him, and it's that normal Japanese thing of not saying anything that's gonna
12:24make other people feel bad, so they're keeping it all very positive, and the other one is
12:29that there is this thing, Japanese people have sort of a, usually a Shinto, Buddhist
12:35style thinking about life and death, you know, and their thing about life and death, and
12:41I mentioned this really briefly in that video recently reviewing Shogun, that they said
12:48in that movie that you live and then you die, right, and Japanese people do tend to have
12:55that thinking about life and death, is that you live and then you die, and it's that Buddhist
13:00way of thinking, you know, and so from that point of view too, they're sort of more accepting
13:06when people pass away, you know, they're more accepting of it, and the end result was a
13:11really, really therapeutic atmosphere, you know, it really was really therapeutic, I
13:17mean I felt like, I didn't sleep the night before, because I got the phone call to tell
13:21me what had happened the night before, and so I didn't sleep at all, all night, just
13:26couldn't sleep, and then went to this thing in the morning, and I was just devastated,
13:29I was a mess, you know, trying to get my head around it, and then spent the day with
13:34these guys, and it was, it was really positive, and really therapeutic, you know, and you
13:41could see everybody, I mean there were people walking in, his girlfriend walked in and she
13:45was just devastated, and I was giving her hugs and talking to her, and we're sitting
13:49down and talking, and throughout the day she improved, you know, and you could see that
13:55she was feeling better and better, because it was just this positive atmosphere, everybody
13:59talking positively about my friend, and just a positive sort of thing, you know, I know
14:07there's some Christian cultures too that have wakes where they drink, and they, you know,
14:12my Irish, I know my Irish friends do that, in Ireland they do that, you know, sometimes,
14:18and it's a really positive thing, and then the Japanese thing, the Buddhist thing is,
14:23we had the all day thing yesterday, and then today we're going to have the one hour funeral,
14:28and then go to the crematorium, and then, oh yeah, then after the cremation they come
14:34out with a box, and the box has pieces of bone in it, and you can take pieces of bone
14:42out of this box with the chopsticks actually, and put them in your own little box and take
14:47them home, and because most people have either a shrine or a Buddhist shrine in their house,
14:55and so they have, the Buddhist shrines have little drawers in them, and you can take those
14:58bones home and put them in your shrine or your Buddhist shrine, right, and so there's
15:03a part of your friend there that you've taken home, or your brother or whoever it happens
15:07to be, and put it in your shrine at home, so they'll do that, and then what happens
15:13is, it depends on how much they do, but quite often what they'll do is then one week later,
15:21they'll have a ceremony at home, in front of their Butsudan, the family home, in front
15:26of their Butsudan, and the Buddhist priest will come and do a thing, and then one week
15:30later he'll do it, and then one week later he'll do it, and then one month later he'll
15:34do it, and then one month later he'll do it, and one month later, and then one year later,
15:40and so it sort of slowly stretches out, you know, and then quite often they'll do it every
15:45year on that date, every year, forever, and we've got ones that we go to for the grandparents,
15:52my wife's grandparents, and once a year we get invited to go to her parents' house,
15:58and the priest comes, and we all sit on cushions on our knees, you know, and say za in front
16:04of the Butsudan, and do these mantras, basically, Buddhist mantras, you know, and they have
16:13a picture up on the Butsudan, usually up on the wall they have the pictures of the family
16:17members who passed away, you know, in the past, so there might be four or five pictures
16:22up there, and then when you have those ceremonies, on that day, the picture of that person whose
16:29ceremony, the ceremony is for, their picture will be up on, in front of you, next to the
16:36Butsudan, right, next to the shrine, and so it's really therapeutic, and I've watched,
16:43I've watched my father-in-law, when we do the ceremony for his mother, and I've watched
16:49him on that day, where he's sitting there on the cushion, on his knees, you know, doing
16:54these mantras, and looking at the picture of his mother, and it's a really slow goodbye,
17:01you know, it's a really slow goodbye, I mean, I've been to funerals in Australia, and,
17:05you know, usually it's an hour or so of singing hymns and stuff, a Christian one,
17:09it's an hour or so of singing hymns and things, and then, and then you go to the grave place,
17:15and the, what do you call it, the cemetery, and they bury the person that's finished,
17:21you know, and that's usually it, isn't it, you know, you might go somewhere after that,
17:24and have some drinks, and food, and a bit of a laugh, and things, and talk about the person,
17:29and then that's it, whereas the, the way the, this Buddhist style of doing it, it goes on,
17:34and on, and on, which again, at first, it does seem a bit much, but, but when you watch the
17:39result, and feel the result of how it's done, it makes it a really slow goodbye, so we had
17:46all day there yesterday with our, with my friend there, lying there, you know, and, and so,
17:52you know, we'd talk, and, and, and drink, and eat, and, and look at him for a while, and,
17:57and, and talk about him, and, you know, and it's sort of an all-day thing, and then today,
18:02they set the, the funeral, and then, you know, one week later, there'll be another ceremony,
18:07and one week later, and one week later, and it's a really long, slow goodbye, which gives you time
18:12to process it, instead of the guy, I remember going to a funeral for a family member in Australia,
18:17and you walk into the church, there's a box, closed box in front of the church, and you walk
18:23in, there's the closed box, and sing some hymns, and do some talking, and then, you know, off you go,
18:30and that, the person's in the box, and off you go, and I mean, some people might be more comfortable
18:34with that, but it just, it just seems like, and yesterday, it really struck me, the difference,
18:41the effect it had, just the effect it had, that from, from the feeling in the morning of dread,
18:47you know, dread with having to deal with this thing, to the, the therapeutic feeling of, of,
18:56you know, this is good, this is healthy, the way we were dealing with it was really healthy, you know,
19:01and you could see people coming in, that were really devastated, and shaken up, and, and then,
19:06as the, as the time went on, you could see that they were feeling better,
19:10you know, so it's interesting, it is interesting, and I mean, it depends on the person, of course,
19:15I mean, some, you know, nobody likes going to these things, of course, and it's still a terribly
19:21upsetting and emotional thing, but it just really struck me yesterday, while I was sitting there,
19:29you know, how, how therapeutic it was, how beneficial it was, you know,
19:36because the last time I made a video about this, it was about another family member, I think,
19:42triggered the last video about this, and I was explaining the logistics of those things,
19:47you know, whereas this time, it was more about the emotion of these things, so,
19:52so yeah, that's it, so it's sort of a, one part of it is supposed to be sort of a heads-up thing,
19:57so if people find themselves in Japan, you sort of know what to expect, if you haven't watched the
20:01other video, watch that too, it'll be on the how to do stuff playlist, probably, so if you
20:05haven't seen that yet, you might want to check that out, because that's just the logistics,
20:09you know, we have to do things like, we have to take cash in a little special envelope,
20:13they have special envelopes for this, and there's some cultural things involved with that, how you
20:18do that, and there's a few logistical things, what you can wear, what you can't wear,
20:24Juzu is the Buddhist beads that you should have, and there's just a few logistical things like
20:29that, that are in the other video, that I haven't talked about in this one, so that one was more
20:33about the actual physical logistics involved, this one was more about the emotions involved,
20:38if you're close to the person, you know, and it depends on the situation too, I mean, I went to a
20:45funeral for one of our martial arts masters once, and I think he was 97 when he went,
20:52and he'd had a great life, and he was amazing at 97 years old, and it's sad, because you lose him,
20:57but it's a totally different feeling, when it's a 97 year old, who's had a full life,
21:02and faded away quietly at the end, it was a totally different feeling from, you know,
21:06a healthy dude, a healthy dude, I mean, you know, 60 years old, but you know, that was a waste,
21:16it was a waste, it was much more emotional, as you can imagine, and it was just interesting with
21:20that, that their system helped, you know, the way they do it, quite often you find that with Japanese
21:25stuff, some Japanese stuff, that at first look is like, oh geez, I don't like that real much,
21:30and then when you actually experience it, you actually find out, oh no, that actually works
21:33quite well, it's actually quite good, so I was one of those examples, you know, so anyway, that's
21:39more than enough of that, hopefully that will help someone, because you know, usually these things
21:45are much easier to deal with, if you've heard about them before you experience them, you know,
21:50when you have to experience them yourself for the first time, and you weren't aware of them,
21:54it can be quite difficult, but if you've at least heard about it first, and then when you're
21:59experiencing it, you go, I've heard about this, okay, you know what to expect a little bit,
22:03it'll be a bit easier, when you walk in and see your first open coffin, you know, if you haven't
22:08seen one of those before, and your friends lying in there looking up at you, that can be a,
22:14that can be difficult at first, if you're not used to it, you know, but if you know it's coming,
22:18if you know it's coming, it's not so bad, and the people will talk to the person too,
22:23the people will talk to the person, and they'll say, to kids, that's the other one that blew me
22:27away, the first time I saw kids at one of these things, and they'll say to the kids, go say goodbye
22:32to uncle, uncle Yoshi, you know, and the kids will go up and look into the coffin and say, bye uncle
22:38Yoshi, actually just before I go, look, the sweetest one I saw was for the grandmother, and
22:44and just before the cremation thing, they have the coffin laid out, you know, and in her case, you
22:50could see all of her in a dress, you know, and they had this mountain of flowers, and everybody that
22:57came put a flower in the coffin, and what happened was, the coffin got absolutely full, to the point
23:03where all that was left was just her face surrounded by flowers, and her whole body was surrounded by
23:08flowers, so all you could see of her was her face, and it was sweet, it was really, really sweet,
23:14everybody came and put a flower in the coffin, you know, including the kids, and they all said, bye
23:18Bachan, and put a flower in, it's really sweet, so feels quite confronting at first, but when you
23:26experience it a bit, you realize that, no, there's some therapeutic value to this for everybody, you
23:30know, so anyway, that's enough of that, no more of that, more videos coming soon.