Steven G.B. MacWhinnie
Autumn had come to Aomori, Japan. The leaves had changed color and begun to fall; snow lightly coated the mountains in the distance. The rain fell lightly as the group from Hirosaki Gakuin University made its way to the Hirosaki City Crematorium. The outing had been organized as a way to start a research project investigating the way people face and process death. The members of the Death Agora project approached the building....
Not being from Japan myself, and as such an outsider to the cultural and societal norms surrounding death, my experience at the crematorium was likely different from that of the other members. I had two reactions to visiting that place. One was tinged by my own experiences in attending funerals in the US and in Japan, and the other one separate from grief or familial considerations. As a pragmatist, I cannot help but look at the resources consumed in the cremation process without thinking that there must be a more environmentally and economically sound solution.
As I drove down a hill towards the crematorium, I could see the city cemetery on my right. The left side of the road was lined with shops selling grave stones and flowers. The crematorium building itself was a mixture of Japanese and modern architecture. The building was made of concrete with a Japanese style roof and large windows offering views of the surrounding gardens. The front of the building had a large awning to allow a hearse to bring the deceased directly to the door. The gardens around the building had been planned with care. As winter was approaching, there was an edge of untidiness to the trees and shrubbery. Winter preparations were not yet underway, but the plants themselves seem to have settled in for the cold months ahead.
The building had been completed in 1983, and this showed as I entered. The far wall of the lobby was white cut stone which contrasted with the black tiled floors. I was reminded of old 1980s hotels in New York. The building had been maintained well and there were no cracks nor stains to be found around the walls or floors. On the left of the entranceway was the office where the administrative work related to the crematorium was carried out.
Next to the office was a large lobby area with a vending machine. This area is free to be used by families as they wait for the cremation process to be completed. There is a long corridor connecting to an outbuilding where there were five waiting rooms that could be reserved for a fee. These rooms were in typical Japanese style with tatami floors. They offered views of the garden or the main building where cremation takes place.
Back at the entrance, moving further into the building a large room to the right served as an antechamber to the area where the deceased are burned. The room had six chambers for burning bodies. There was a small sitting area set back away from the entrance to the chambers. In respect of Japanese cultural norms, there was a connected room where the burnt body of the deceased would be brought, and the family would collect the bones for later deposit in a family grave in the nearby cemetery.
This room had a strange feeling. There was an elaborate alter near the entrance and smaller alters at each entrance to the burning chambers. The size of the room gave a certain impression of grandness to the process. The connected room where the family could gather their loved-one’s bones shared this sense. The ceiling opened up to a small window at its peak meters above. Dark stone walls and dark tile floors gave the room a sense of warmness contrasted with the coldness of the stone itself.
As the sense of wonder of the room began to wear off, the more analytical side of my mind was spurred. I noticed practical tools of the cremation process in the room. There were tools on a small black cabinet: dust pans and brooms. The building had been built to pay respects to those who had died and provide a space for families to confront death and the cremation process in a peaceful setting, yet the realities of dealing with death in a very physical sense were still there.
While I am very much aware of the need for grieving and a way for family members to say goodbye to loved ones. I wondered what sort of impact death might have on the environment and economy.
The Hirosaki City Crematorium makes use of kerosene to run their cremation chambers. The exhaust is not vented directly into the environment, rather it is hidden as the sight of smoke might upset mourners. It takes a large amount of kerosene to burn a human body. As the human body is around 65% water, it takes around 100 megajoules of thermal energy before the body begins to burn (Williams, 2017). The Crematorium reported that it uses around 60L of kerosene to burn a single body. The City Crematorium currently handles between 6 and 7 corpses a day. That amounts to between 360L and 420L of kerosene used each day. Over the course of a year this might add up to between 131,000L and 152,880L.
This use of kerosene has both an environmental and economic impact. The environmental impact can be thought of in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. The following calculations do not factor in the further impact of extracting, refining, and shipping the kerosene to Japan from areas around the world. If we take a medium yearly kerosene consumption of 141,940L then we can calculate carbon emissions strictly from the burning of kerosene as 353 tons of CO2 released in a year (2.489kg CO2/L taken from the Ministry of the Environment). This is nearly one ton of CO2 released each day. This number also does not include the emission of carbon from the burning of the body. If we include the carbon released from the deceased body, we can add an additional 25 tons of carbon released a year[1].
Individual carbon emissions are less than that of industry, but they do have an effect on the environment. The average person in Japan is responsible for the release of 9.91 tons of CO2 each year (Murtaugh & Schlax, 2009). This is little compared to industrial output, but all carbon emissions have an impact on the environment. The cremation process of an individual is relatively small, but the cumulative total of all cremations carried out across the country do add up. With over 1.2 million deaths in Japan in 2017 (The World Factbook) that is perhaps upwards of 200,000 tons of CO2 released each year from cremation along.
Ignoring the costs of funerals and cemeteries, the cost in kerosene alone is significant. The Hirosaki City Crematorium has a 5000L tank on the premises, with a daily usage of around 400L, this tank must be filled several times a month. While it is likely that the city has contracts with kerosene suppliers to provide lower prices, for a general idea of the overall cost of cremation, the current price for kerosene as of writing (95 yen/L) was taken, and with that price, the crematorium was calculated to use up to nearly 40,000 yen in kerosene daily. Over the course of a year this might add up to over 13 million yen.
Both the environmental and economic impact of death are significant. As the population of Japan continues to age the number of people dying is also increasing. It is ever more important to reconsider how to deal with death.
My trip to the crematorium started my brain turning. Is the way we as a society deal with death appropriate for the current age? The building and its surroundings, designed by famous Japanese architect Kumio Maekawa, were built in the 1980s, the crematorium reflected a respect for death and showed stylistic influences from the architectural norms of that era. In the modern age, is that the best way to approach death. Cremation in Japan has a long history, but as society’s needs change, I would suggest that the method used for the disposal of bodies and how death is viewed at a societal level need to change.
References
Japan Ministry of the Environment. (n.d.) Chart of CO2 emissions from different types of Fuels. Retrieved October 31, 2018, from https://www.env.go.jp/council/16pol-ear/y164-04/mat04.pdf
Murtaugh, P. A., & Schlax, M. G. (2009). Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals. Global Environmental Change, 19(1), 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2008.10.007
Ministry of Education, Cultures, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). (n.d.) Statistics. Retrieved October 31, 2018, from http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/main_b8.htm
Schirber, M. (2009, April 16). The Chemistry of Life: The Human Body. Retrieved October 31, 2018, from https://www.livescience.com/3505-chemistry-life-human-body.html
The World Factbook: JAPAN. (2018, October 24). Retrieved October 31, 2018, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html
Williams, C. (2017, June 05). No, we can't burn people for electricity. Retrieved October 31, 2018, from https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/no-we-cant-burn-people-for-electricity
[1] If we assume that the average Japanese body burned weights 60kg (MEXT, n.d.), and that the human body is 18% carbon (Schirber, 2009) and that the process of cremation is perfect combustion, that would be 10.8kg of carbon for each person. With an average of 6.5 people in a day, that would add up to an additional 25 tons of CO2 a year.