Photo/Illutration A coffin is brought to a crematorium. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

After losing my 90-year-old uncle this autumn, I quickly pulled mourning attire out of a closet in anticipation of soon attending his funeral. 

However, I discovered that my uncle's funeral wouldn't take place until as long as six days later.

That delay was due to a nearby crematorium being fully booked.

Such a long waiting list for cremation has been the norm for years in the metropolitan area around the Japanese capital, according to an expert.

“The problem is relatively serious in eastern Japan, compared with the western part of the country,” said Mutsumi Yokota, 58, a senior researcher at the All Japan Cemetery Association. “Families must often wait eight to 10 days in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture.”

The association released the results of its survey on the circumstances of crematoriums and funeral halls nationwide this past summer.

Funded by the health ministry, the first large-scale study of its kind revealed that more than 25 percent of respondents were struggling to secure places to keep bodies until cremation.

In many cases, specialized agencies were commissioned to look after corpses typically for 10,000 yen ($66) to 20,000 yen daily. Deceased individuals can be preserved properly at homes and temples only for a limited time.

Amid the rapid aging of Japanese society, upward of 1.56 million people died last year to hit a record high. The figure is projected to continue rising and peaking around 2040.

Few local governments are urgently working to put more cremation facilities in place, however.

“Those establishments are frequently deemed as unpleasant, so setting them up can take more than a decade to convince residents and acquire suitable sites,” Yokota said. “Another reason for municipalities’ refraining from introducing such facilities recklessly is the forecasted decline in demand for crematories 20 years from now.”

Crematorium operators are taking steps on their own.

They currently accept bodies for cremation in the morning and at night, whereas they were formerly burnt solely during the day. Dormant facilities are being brought back online as well.

Some operators are reportedly doing business even on days traditionally considered to be ominous among superstitious customers.

Around the world, families do not necessarily rush to hold funerals immediately after their beloved ones’ deaths, unlike in Japan.

Itaru Takeda, 58, chairman of the Association of Research Initiatives for Cremation, Funeral and Cemetery Studies, said embalming services are widely available in the United States to preserve bodies from decomposition for restoration and makeup.

Send-off ceremonies are not carried out in a hurry so that relatives and friends from faraway areas can travel to the service in time. Rituals are held no less than several weeks later on occasion.

“People say goodbye slowly, not to have corpses to be taken away promptly,” explained Takeda. “This kind of funeral culture is well-established in a lot of countries.”

On the day of my uncle's funeral, as many as 15 furnaces were operating at full tilt in the crematorium, with groups of individuals in mourning clothes moving about briskly on the grounds.

The sight suggests the possibility that a coffin containing my body will also be carried swiftly in similar circumstances some day. The thought gave me a sense of disconsolateness.

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