Facing Death Otherwise: Dr. Anne Allison on Japan’s Changing Relationship with Dying

What does it mean to die well in a society where the family grave is no longer guaranteed? This is the question Dr. Anne Allison, professor of cultural anthropology at Duke, has spent the past decade exploring in her research on death and dying in Japan. Her work provides an uncanny mirror for global questions of aging, loneliness, and human rights — questions that resonate deeply alongside the upcoming screening of Plan 75, a Japanese film about state-sponsored euthanasia.

Allison did not set out to be an anthropologist of death. Her career began with studies of Japanese nightlife, media, motherhood and even Pokémon. But while doing fieldwork in Tokyo, she kept encountering the same haunting phrase: “I don’t know where I’m going to go.”

These people were talking about after death. The family grave wasn’t an option anymore, and they were afraid of their spirit being stranded. 

“Literally, people didn't have a place [to go]…no one to take care of [them],” Allison said. 

That realization launched Allison’s latest book, Being Dead Otherwise, which examines how Japan is grappling with profound transformations in death care.

Death Without a Place

Traditionally, Japanese families interred their dead in patrilineal ancestor graves, with continuity stretching across generations. But as marriage and birth rates fall and single households rise in the country, that system is eroding.

“The system of taking care of the dead could fall apart… It’s not possible to be sustained. There have been all these new things that have started appearing, really recently to do death differently. So there are alternatives to the family grave. There are high rise columbaria in Tokyo…where you can get buried technologically,” she said.  

These innovations are more than practical fixes. They represent new ways of imagining belonging, kinship, and community at life’s end.

Image

The Phenomenon of Lonely Death

One of the most sobering phenomena Allison has studied is kodokushi, or lonely death. In these cases, people die alone, their bodies sometimes undiscovered for days or weeks.

“Sometimes their bodies aren’t discovered for a while,” Allison said. “If they don’t have anyone…  it will be handled by the city or the municipality. They'll clean up the place. They'll cremate the body. They'll hold on to the ashes to see if anyone will claim them, but usually the ashes aren't claimed, and then the dead will go into a plot for what's called the disconnected souls.”

For Allison, this raises urgent ethical and political questions. “Why should it just be the family that’s responsible? What happens if you don’t have kin — or if your family can’t afford to take care of you?” she asked. Who, then, bears responsibility for care — the state or the community?

Feminist Practices of Care and Beyond Living

Death in Japan has long been gendered. By law, women take their husband’s surname, meaning they are expected to be buried in his family grave. Divorce, estrangement, or even resistance to tradition can leave women without a resting place after they pass.

Allison encountered women who refused that fate. One married woman told her,“'I don't want to be buried in the grave of my husband’s family,” selecting a different plot, she saved money from a part-time job so she could be buried there, “About 10% of the people who are buried in the alternative burial ground this woman chose, are married women who don't want to be buried in the graves of their husbands.”

For these women, death can be “a form of liberation” Allison states. If they couldn't get a divorce for whatever reason while still alive they can have a “post-death divorce.” 

Such feminist initiatives challenge patriarchal norms while opening space for new forms of autonomy and belonging, even beyond life.

Alongside alternative burial sites, other experiments are reshaping Japanese approaches to death. People are forming “grave friends” — non-kin companions with whom they plan to be buried. 

“It's a new kind of relationality,” Allison said. 

This is critical for people who are often isolated or stranded by their families, namely LGBTQ+, former offenders or migrants. 

“It has incredible implications…  It doesn’t just have to be normative,” She said

Lessons Beyond Japan

While her focus is Japan, Allison believes these transformations matter globally. “It’s a bellwether of what’s going to happen to the rest of us,” she said. “We have a lot to learn about what could be our future by seeing what's already taking place in Japan.”

She also notes shifts in the United States, where death has long been a taboo subject. 

“When I started this research in Japan, not many people were talking about death practices here, and a lot said, ‘Oh, your work is just so sad or a downer topic.’ But, you know, thinking that death is necessarily grim or it's something that you shouldn't really talk about unless you have to, has started shifting here too… There's something called the Death Positivity Movement,” Allison said. 

As the audience prepares for the Plan 75 film, Allison hopes the film and her work encourage reflection rather than avoidance. “It’s not like, great, we’re all going to die,” she explained. “It's more having healthy conversations about something that's going to happen to all of us,” She said. And then asking: "What responsibility do we all have for other people?”

For Allison, death is ultimately a human rights issue. “Rather than turning our eyes away,” she urged, “to be aware of what's happening to people who are getting raided by ICE, and what's happening to people who are on the streets and don't have any food, and what's happening to people who are dealing with mental illness, and what's happening to people who are in prison.”

She advises that instead of being self-focused, and individualistic, as U.S. communities tend to be, we need to turn our eyes to thinking about other people and other circumstances.

The Plan 75 (Chie Hayakawa, 2022) film screening will be held in the Rubenstein Arts Center Film Theater on Sept. 25 at 7:00 p.m., as a part of the “Rights! Camera! Action!” Series. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Anne Allison and Robin Kirk.