“Where Are We Supposed to Hold a Memorial Service?”—A Tokyo Resident on the Fading Bond Between Temples and Modern Life

Recently, my parents traveled to a Buddhist temple in a rural area for a memorial service for one of my aunts.

In Japan, a hōji is a Buddhist ceremony held to honor someone again at set intervals after their death. It is, in a sense, an additional memorial event that follows the funeral.

There is a first-year service, followed by services traditionally known as the third, seventh, and thirteenth memorials, and so on.

Apparently, there are still parts of rural Japan where going to a temple for a memorial service feels completely normal.

Hearing their story made me wonder something.

Where would people of my generation, living in Tokyo, hold a memorial service in the first place?

I was born and raised in Tokyo, but I have no relationship with any temple in my daily life.

There are temples in my neighborhood. But they are “nearby” in the same sense that a convenience store or hospital is nearby. I have no connection with them.

I certainly do not have a regular temple that I could call and say, “It is time for the third memorial service, so let us ask our usual temple.”

As I thought about this, an even more fundamental question occurred to me.

Do we need to hold these memorial services at all?

People Once Had an Automatic Connection to a Temple

During Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868), when the country was ruled by the samurai class, the temple registration system essentially tied every household to a Buddhist temple.

Temples were religious institutions, but they also performed an administrative role by certifying people’s identity and affiliation.

That function was separated from temples after the Meiji era began in 1868, as Japan set out to build a modern state. But the customs remained: ask a temple for help when someone dies, build a grave, and hold memorial services every few years.

Now, however, the assumptions behind those customs are themselves collapsing.

Do We Really Need Graves, Posthumous Names, and Memorial Services?

More people are choosing not to maintain ancestral graves. Instead, they select columbariums, burials beneath trees, or the scattering of ashes. The term hakajimai, meaning the closure of a family grave, is no longer unusual.

That naturally leads to other questions.

“Do we need a kaimyo, a posthumous Buddhist name?”

“Do we need to call a Buddhist priest every time?”

“Do we really have to continue through the thirteenth memorial?”

The questions become particularly practical when money is involved.

When posthumous names, funerals, and memorial services require substantial payments, people begin to wonder whether they are paying because the rites are religiously necessary or merely because that is how things have always been done.

My wife’s family held memorial services through the third memorial after her father died.

At that point, they told the temple:

“This will be the last one.”

Apparently, the person at the temple was left speechless.

From the family’s perspective, holding services through the third memorial was surely enough. From the temple’s perspective, the reaction was probably:

“What? You are stopping here?”

That is quite a large gap in expectations.

Temples Have Their Own Circumstances

Of course, temples cannot be maintained for free.

Maintaining the main hall, Buddhist statues, graveyard, and temple grounds costs money. In rural areas, both the population and the number of danka—households affiliated with and supporting a temple—are declining. The buildings, however, do not become any smaller.

It is only natural that temples need a certain amount of income from funerals, posthumous names, and memorial services in order to survive.

The problem is that those circumstances no longer give modern people a reason to say, “In that case, I will pay.”

In the past, it was enough to say:

“That is simply how it is done.”

Today, people ask:

“Why is it necessary?”

For a tradition, that is a very difficult question.

They Are Not Leaving Temples; They Were Never Connected in the First Place

People often talk about “young people abandoning temples” or “the decline of religion in Japan.”

But living in Tokyo, I see it a little differently.

Before people can leave, there has to be a connection in the first place—and many never had one.

They do not normally visit a temple. They do not know a head priest. They do not even know which temple, if any, their family is affiliated with.

Yet the moment a family member dies, a relationship with a temple suddenly begins with a series of questions:

“What will you do about the temple?”

“What will you do about the posthumous name?”

“What will you do about the memorial services?”

From the temple’s perspective, these are important rituals with centuries of history. From our perspective, they have become services we encounter only a few times in our lives.

Once people begin to see them as “services,” they naturally start thinking about price and necessity.

Memorial Services Have Become “Cancelable”

My first thought after hearing my parents’ story was:

“Where are we supposed to hold a memorial service?”

In the past, that question probably would not have occurred to anyone.

A household had its temple, its grave, and its priest. When someone died, the funeral was held there, and the later memorial services were held there too.

Now, however, we have to choose for ourselves.

Where will we hold it?

How much will we pay?

Will we hold one at all?

Once something becomes a choice, “stop doing it” naturally becomes one of the options.

At the third memorial, my wife’s family said:

“This will be the last one.”

When you think about it, that is a remarkably modern response.

It is a religious custom with centuries of history, yet from our perspective it has become:

“We used the service through the third memorial, but we will not need it from now on.”

No wonder the temple was speechless.

Apparently, even Buddhist memorial services now come with the option to cancel.