The end of the road in Buddhist Japan

items, and flat stakes with the names of mourners who have donated the flowers. One or two Buddhist priests lead the ritual, burning incense, passing an incense box for the mourners to offer up three pinches of incense upon, ringing a temple chime, beating a traditional drum, and chanting sutras for up to an hour. The mourners then often gather in another room for dinner, again making occasional offerings to the deceased.

It was during that dinner, I think, that the loss of o-ba-chan hit me the hardest. It was exactly the sort of gathering she would be at – there are numerous Buddhist ceremonies on anniversaries of deaths which we had attended in the past – and the fact she wasn't there to share a wink or a grin with made me very distraught. Beer, oolong tea and an orange soda drink were available, and I couldn’t help thinking that o-ba-chan would be drinking the orange drink, so I quietly opened one and took it upstairs into the funeral hall to her casket, where I set it on the table near the fruit, rang the chime twice and lingered near the open window of the casket to look at her face.

Nobuko Nakano had never much cared for her own face. She was born in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island, and apparently her family was well-to-do. She spoke of having a “nanny” and had developed a finicky appetite for which she was notorious right up until the day she died. She moved to Yokohama and married a handsome businessman, and they raised three daughters, the youngest of which is my mother-in-law, all around the time of World War Two. Even after her husband died in 1994, she still expressed wonder that she had been able to marry him. “I was so ugly,” she said. “My sister was the beautiful one. She had so many boyfriends!”

“She needs a glass,” my wife said softly from behind me, snapping me from my reverie, and she offered me one which I filled with orange soda and set next to o-ba-chan. “I think she knew,” my wife said at length. “She left money for the funeral, money for our baby, and money for my brother’s birthday this month. She had set it all aside. That was unlike her. I think she already knew when we went to the shrine for the Dog Day blessing.” Dogs are associated with healthy

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