Cramped for space, Japanese pay their respects at ‘corpse hotels’
The Sousou hotel in the Japanese city of Kawasaki is hated by its neighbours, but it is difficult, at first glance, to understand why.
There is no noisy bar, no rowdy comings and goings, and the guests are models of serenity and good behaviour. They arrive in black cars, never leave their rooms, and check out discreetly a few days later.
The Sousou is a ‘‘corpse hotel"; a place for the accommodation of the dead – and a symptom of the profound changes taking place in Japanese society.
The population of Japan is ageing faster than anywhere else in the world, but there is a corollary to this: every year, more and more Japanese are dying.
In 2005, for the first time, there were more deaths than births. Last year more than died. By 2040, a million people when the baby boomer generation is expected to reach peak mortality, having lived
When someone has died, some people can’t take them back home, but they don’t want to slide them into a fridge on a metal tray. They just want a quiet place where they can be alone with their loved one. Hisao Takegishi, ‘‘corpse hotel’’ founder
into their 90s, the estimate is that 1.7 million of them will be dying every year – and Japan’s funeral business cannot keep up.
Crematoria, where almost all Japanese end their journeys, have waiting lists of several days, and it is difficult to get planning permission to build more.
The traditional practice was for the dead to be laid out at home, but these days that is not practical. Urban apartments are cramped enough already for the living, and some have policies that forbid the entry of corpses in the same way that they exclude pets.
A law intended to prevent people being mistakenly burned alive bans cremation within 24 hours of death.
‘‘When someone has died, some people can’t take them back home but they don’t want to slide them into a fridge on a metal tray,’’ says Hisao Takegishi, who set up Sousou in 2014. ‘‘They just want a quiet place where they can be alone with their loved one, say their goodbyes and grieve.’’
The hotel has 10 simply decorated rooms, and families are free to bring in whatever personal objects or religious paraphernalia they like. Soundproofing enables grieving to take place in private.
The rooms are air-conditioned, and the dead can be accommodated for up to five days – any longer than that and refrigeration is required.
A one-night stay costs 9000 yen (NZ$115), and Takegishi says occupancy rates are between 70 and 80 per cent.
‘‘The most important thing we provide here is the right kind of service,’’ he says.
‘‘You have to be kind, you have to be on hand, but you don’t want to make the families feel that they have to be grateful to you all the time.’’
Among local people, in what is a semi-industrial area of Kawasaki, there has been fierce resistance to the business. Signs have been posted around the neighbourhood proclaiming ‘‘We absolutely oppose the corpse storage hotel’’.
Objectors speak of the ‘‘creepiness’’ of the hotel, and their concerns about smells and ghosts – neither of which have manifested themselves.
Takegishi believes that he is slowly winning over the objectors.
He opened the roof of the hotel to all during the northern summer so that neighbours could enjoy the local fireworks.
More importantly, two local families decided to use the hotel’s services themselves.
‘‘Their elderly parents died,’’ he says, ‘‘and they stayed here. They said they were very satisfied – I think they changed their minds.
‘‘It makes no sense to say that a body is ‘creepy’ when a minute earlier it was a human being.’’