Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan
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DEATH AND DESIRE DEATH Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies 6 Religion and Thought 2 — Death and Desire DE RAVERI ANTONI, in Contemporary Japan Representing, Practicing, Performing edited by Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri Edizioni Ca’Foscari Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies Religion and Thought Collana diretta da | A series directed by Paolo Calvetti, Massimo Raveri Bonaventura Ruperti, Guido Samarani 6 | 2 Edizioni Ca’Foscari Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies Religion and Thought General scientific editors Religion and Thought sub-series: Massimo Raveri (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Arts and Literature sub-series: Bonaventura Ruperti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) History and Society sub-series: Guido Samarani (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Linguistics and Language Education sub-series: Paolo Calvetti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Scientific committee Religion and Thought sub-series: Andrea De Antoni (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan) Federico Marcon (Princeton University, USA) Tatsuma Padoan (University College Cork, Ireland) Arts and Literature sub-series: Tomoko Aoyama (The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia) Jaqueline Berndt (Kyoto Seika University, Japan) Luisa Bienati (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Caterina Mazza (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Carolina Negri (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Andreas Regelsberger (Universität Trier, Deutschland) Silvia Vesco (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Pierantonio Zanotti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) History and Society sub-series: Kimio Ito¯ (Kyoto University, Japan) Toshio Miyake (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Andrea Revelant (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Steffi Richter (Universität Leipzig, Deutschland) Sven Saaler (Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan) Linguistics and Language Education sub-series: Patrick Heinrich (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Hideo Hosokawa (Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan) Kikuo Maekawa (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo, Japan) Marcella Mariotti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Barbara Pizziconi (SOAS, University of London, UK) Aldo Tollini (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Executive coordinator Marcella Mariotti (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) Head office Dipartimento di Studi sull’Asia e sull’Africa Mediterranea Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Palazzo Vendramin dei Carmini Dorsoduro 3462 30123 Venezia http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/collane/ca-foscari-japanese-studies/ Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan Representing, Practicing, Performing edited by Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri Venezia Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing 2017 Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan. Representing, Practicing, Performing Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri (eds.) © 2017 Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri per i testi | for the texts © 2017 Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing per la presente edizione | for this edition Qualunque parte di questa pubblicazione può essere riprodotta, memorizzata in un sistema di recupero dati o trasmessa in qualsiasi forma o con qualsiasi mezzo, elettronico o meccanico, senza autorizzazione, a condizione che se ne citi la fonte. Any part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission provided that the source is fully credited. Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Dorsoduro 3246 30123 Venezia http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/ [email protected] 1a edizione maggio 2017 ISBN 978-88-6969-151-5 [ebook] ISBN 978-88-6969-150-8 [print] Il volume è stato pubblicato grazie alla collaborazione di | The book has been published with the support of: Certificazione scientifica delle Opere pubblicate da Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing: tutti i saggi pubblicati hanno ottenuto il parere favorevole da parte di valutatori esperti della materia, attraverso un processo di revisione anonima sotto la responsabilità del Comitato scientifico della collana. La valutazione è stata condotta in aderenza ai criteri scientifici ed editoriali di Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Scientific certification of the works published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing: all essays published in this volume have received a favourable opinion by subject-matter experts, through an anonymous peer review process under the responsibility of the Scientific Committee of the series. The evaluations were conducted in adherence to the scientific and editorial criteria established by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari. Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan. Representing, Practicing, Performing / Edited by Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri — 1. ed. — Venezia : Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing, 2017. — 278 p.; 23 cm. — (Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies; 6). — ISBN 978-88-6969-151-5. URL http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/libri/978-88-6969-150-8/ DOI 10.14277/978-88-6969-151-5 Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan Representing, Practicing, Performing edited by Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri Contents Introduction Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri 7 “Each Death is Unique” Beyond Epistemic Transfiguration in Thanatology Matteo Cestari 35 Discourses on Death-and-Life in Modern Japan and the Desire behind Them Quest for the New Identity among Modern Japanese Elites Susumu Shimazono 79 Negotiating the Unusual, Classifying the Unnatural The Reporting and Investigation of Medical-related Deaths in England and Japan Louella Matsunaga 97 Lust for Death Dark Tourism, Creation and Consumption of Haunted Places in Contemporary Kyoto Andrea De Antoni 145 The Funeral in Contemporary Japanese Society The Company-sponsored Funeral of the Founder. Arrangement and Creation of the Most Important Funeral Service in the Company’s History Hirochika Nakamaki 173 A Dream to Challenge the ‘World of Dreams’ Evanescence and Desire in Ano ie (1953) by Enchi Fumiko Daniela Moro 185 Hijikata Tatsumi’s Sabotage of Movement and the Desire to Kill the Ideology of Death Katja Centonze 203 Portraits of Desire in Blue Cinzia Cimalando 233 The Magnified Body of Survival Tracing Communication Paradigms in Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s Storytelling Francesco Comotti 255 Death and Desire in Contemporary Japan Representing, Practicing, Performing edited by Andrea De Antoni and Massimo Raveri Introduction Andrea De Antoni (Ritsumeikan University, Japan) Massimo Raveri (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italia) This volume was inspired by the Conference “Death and Desire in Modern and Contemporary Japan”, held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2011. As organisers of the Conference, we decided to start thinking about publishing some of the papers as a follow-up project. Unfortunately, the process took more time than we had expected. Nevertheless, this delay gave us the opportunity to take some time to consider and discuss some issues related to the topic, in an attempt to refine and redefine the project’s direction. During this period, we witnessed an international increase in the inter- est in the topics of death, dying and ‘thanatology’, both among academics and within a more general audience. For instance, internet discussions groups – the widest of which is “H-Death”, providing announcements about International Conferences related to the topic – have become much more active in the last few years. Moreover, also the rise of forums, websites and Facebook pages on death-related topics such as war and war-tourism, museums of torture, or the so-called “dark-tourism”, has been highlighted by existing research (e.g. Sharpley 2009; Stone, Sharpley 2008; see also De Antoni in this volume), while the international market has witnessed an increase of horror films, both from the perspective of production and release (e.g. Popmatters 2017), and from the one of tickets sold at box offices (e.g. The Numbers 2017). Similarly, in recent years, there has also been an increase in scholarly works on death-related topics. This trend has involved several disciplines that include social sciences – mainly anthropology (e.g. Kaufman, Morgan 2005; Franklin, Lock 2003; Lock 2002) and sociology (e.g. Exley 2004; Thompson et al. 2016) – but also film studies (e.g. Dixon 2010; Hantke 2004) and literature (e.g. Teodorescu 2015). There are even some ground-breaking attempts to deepen the understanding of death, dying and grief from an evo- lutionary perspective in primatology and biology, in the attempt to establish the new fields of “pan-thanatology” (Anderson, Gillies, Lock 2010): a study of death and grieving that comprises also non-human animals. Ca’ Foscari Japanese Studies 6 DOI 10.14277/6969-151-5/CFJS-6-0 | Submission 2016-02-01 ISBN [ebook] 978-88-6969-151-5 | ISBN [print] 978-88-6969-150-8 | © 2017 7 Death and Desire in Modern and Contemporary Japan, 7-34 Studies on Japan have not been an exception to this trend. On the op- posite, scholars of Japan seem to have been even more interested in the topic of death than academics focusing on other areas. Indeed, in the last few decades, publications and research into practices related to death have flourished. In Japan, Nakamaki Hirochika and Shimazono Susumu (both included as authors in this volume) were central in the organisation and management of whole research clusters on death-related practices. Nakamaki was one of the precursors of this interest, focusing on funerary customs in Japan (1986) for quite a long time and gradually specialising