NANTAN, Kyoto Prefecture--Instead of bowing their heads at ancestral graves, about 50 people offered prayers in front of a single large stone structure enshrining the deceased of Butsumoyoji temple's 70 patron families here on Aug. 12.

The worshippers, whether related or not, came together for a Buddhist memorial service at the temple during the Bon holidays when Japanese remember their ancestors.

“It will be nice if relationships between you worshippers deepen through this temple,” Tetsuzen Moriya, chief priest of the temple, said during the service, the second such one.

The joint monument replaced ancestral graves kept at a cemetery by individual families.

With the increasing graying of Japan and depopulation, maintaining family graves has become an urgent issue for residents in rural areas across Japan.

Some of these graves were closed as those who moved out of their community to live in cities chose to transfer their ancestors’ remains to a cemetery near their current homes.

But in the Shimokoshi area of Nantan’s Koshi farming district, all of about 20 households closed their graves that were scattered at three locations. They now pay their respects to their ancestors enshrined at the monument, completed in 2020, at Butsumyoji temple.

Residents in this community expect to join their forebears in this communal resting place when they die.

The Shimokoshi and adjacent settlements, as well as the temple in the Koshi district, could offer a solution to the sustainability of graves as shrinking local communities struggle with maintaining ancestral graves.

The number of reburials, including the closure of graves, has been on the rise, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

In fiscal 2020, about 118,000 reinternments took place across the nation, 1.6 times the number for fiscal 2010.

But a ministry official noted that it is highly unusual for all residents of a community to close their graves together, such as in the Shimokoshi settlement.

People aged 65 or older account for 42 percent of the Koshi district.

The task of cutting weeds at cemeteries regularly is a major burden although all the residents were enlisted, according to Yoshihiro Nishida, 44, who is the youngest member of the Koshi district.

“Some families in our community will be left with nobody to maintain their graves five or 10 years from now,” Nishida said. “Before that happens, we thought that we should close our family graves and have a temple perform services in perpetuity for the deceased on behalf of the entire community.”

Moriya became the chief monk of the temple in 2010. Since then, he's felt the need to tackle how to manage graves in the Koshi district and the future of community residents, who are patrons of his temple.

The survival of the temple, which is affiliated with the Soto school of Buddhism and has a history of nearly 600 years, is also at stake.

In 2019, Moriya visited each of the patrons to hear their thoughts about the pressing issues.

Nishida did the same to find out how his neighbors felt about the future of their community.

Moriya found that some families were uneasy about the notion of losing their own ancestral graves for good.

Heeding such misgivings, Moriya, alongside a group of patrons, decided to transfer headstones next to the monument when they close their graves.

After a series of discussions over a year, all the temple patrons gave the green light to the project to build a communal monument for the dead, which would replace traditional cemeteries.

A stone dealer in Kyoto built the monument and assisted with relocating the headstones.

Moriya did not ask for donations from the patrons for the project. Instead, he arranged with the local communities for services in perpetuity for the deceased to be performed at a charge of 80,000 yen ($600) per family.

The sum includes services for those who wish to have them after they die.

Moriya also decided to accept ashes to the monument and services in perpetuity, regardless of where they lived or live and their Buddhist denominations.

A 75-year-old man who lives in another district in Nantan is one participant. He recently closed his family’s grave and signed up for the collective monument.

“We have a lot of trouble in maintaining our own grave,” he said. “I made the decision, considering my age.”

Moriya said the community reached an agreement on the joint grave project during a narrow window of opportunity.

“Everybody would have opposed it if the idea had been broached 20 years ago,” he said. “If it were 10 years from now, nobody could be left in the community willing to work to build a consensus about the project. We could make one before it was too late.”

He said a similar problem may be occurring in many other locations in Japan.

“We should form a bond with people beyond our own neighborhoods to allow both a rural community and a temple to survive," Moriya said. “Constructing a joint grave is an answer to the question of the sustainability of a Buddhist temple and a local community.”