| Abstract |

In the face of socio-economic shifts—a high aging/low childbirth population, decline in marriage and co-residence, irregularization of labor —the family model of mortuary care that once prevailed in Japan is coming undone. As more and more Japanese live and die alone, they face the prospect of becoming “disconnected dead:” stranded without a grave nor social others to be tended by once there. Given the specter of such a bad death, new designs and trends are emerging for both necro-habitation and care-giving the dead.

Prominent here is making mortuary arrangements for and by oneself while still alive (seizen seiri). Such anticipatory death-planning is the issue taken up in this talk. Based on fieldwork with new initiatives and services catering to a clientele of aging singles in Japanese, it is asked: What kind of grievability is this when the sociality of being cared for by others is handled by the self in anticipation of death? Mortuary presentism; a new ontology of the dead?

| Bio |

Anne Allison is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, United States. A specialist in contemporary Japan, her books include Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994), Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (2006), and Precarious Japan (2013). Published this year is Being Dead Otherwise on new Japanese practices regarding the dead, and the relations between self and other in caregiving them.

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s07e08
Thursday 2023-12-07, 18:00~19:30

| Place & Preparations |

| Plattform & Link |

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s07/#e08.