Japan cremation is a special ceremony

“In Japan, the night before the funeral / cremation, the very close relatives hold a special ceremony called ‘Otsuya’ to farewell the body. We burn candles and incense and stay awake all night, just in case the person wakes up. Monks also visit to pray and give the person a Buddhist name.”

After cremation in Japan

“After the body has been cremated, relatives each take a bone with chopsticks and place it in a white pottery jar. This way we send a message that we haven’t abandoned the body. The voice box bone is a special bone because it is the shape of Buddha sitting in prayer. After 49 days the bones can go in a gravestone at the cemetery.”

After the appropriate time, the relatives go back and pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to an urn using large chopsticks or metal picks. Sometimes, two relatives will hold the same bone at the same time with their chopsticks in order to move it. This is the only time in Japan when it is proper for two people to hold the same item at the same time with chopsticks.

At all other times, two people holding anything with chopsticks at the same time will remind everyone of the funeral of a close relative causing everyone to break down and cry for hours on end. This is considered a major social faux pas in Japan. To ensure the eternal comfort of the deceased, the bones of the feet are placed first, and the bones of the head placed last. Wouldn’t wanna be upside-down for all eternity, now would ya?

In some cases, the ashes may be divided among more than one urn. For example, some ashes will go to a family grave, some to the temple or a company grave, and some might even go into outer space.