"Ann Says Life and Death" Lecture Series No. 1
An Jian Xing
Good evening, friends!
Many of my friends in the circle of friends are colleagues in the funeral industry, and they often encourage me to open a funeral micro-class. A friend said that in the field of funerals, I "know everything from theory to practice, from strategy to tactics, from macro to micro", that is a prize! Under the fame, it is actually difficult to attach. However, looking back at my footprints in the twenty-five or six years since I entered the funeral world, it is true that "from funeral to burial, from Tao to art, from abroad to China" is still involved. China's funeral industry (especially the funeral industry) has just started, and it is in the ascendant and has a promising future. As a brick-and-arrow guide, I may wish to share some of my experiences and experiences with you.
Today we will first talk about a funeral concept: the body is not a corpse
Have you all seen the Japanese movie "The Mortician"? If you haven't seen it yet, then be sure to see it once. I never watch movies again, but I've seen this movie five or six times, and every time I see it, I'm touched and want to watch it again. However, the name of the film is not well translated. It is based on Aoki Shinmon's autobiographical novel, the original novel is called "Na Coffin Diary", which I have read in Japanese and wrote very well.
I randomly translate a few sentences for everyone: "Every day, every day, I look at the deceased; looking, watching, I will feel that the deceased is very quiet and beautiful." On the contrary, when I look at the living who are afraid of death, who are afraid of death, who do not face death, I think they are ugly. Their intricate gazes of amazement, fear, sorrow, worry, anger, etc., flowed slimily down my spine like a soup (bathing the deceased)"...
The author is a coffin man and a poet. He distilled his career of more than forty years into this autobiographical novel that looks directly at life and death. It seems that there are also Chinese translations, and you may wish to find them to read. In the original novel, there are many ultra-everyday psychological experiences about the soul, which are difficult to reflect in the movie. However, the film adaptation still captures the essence of the original work from the ordinary daily work and life of a coffin (also called a mortician), and reflects beauty and romance in ordinary daily work and life.
The Japanese version of the movie is called おくりびと, which means "sending off", which means to send a lost life from our world to another world. Look how romantic this is! In fact, this is the real value of our industry. I guess the translator of this film was worried that at this stage, we Chinese audiences would not be able to understand the meaning of this "send-off", so they had to translate it into a very common professional name "Mortician", right? In fact, this also reflects the gap between our concept of funerals between China and Japan, an advanced country in funeral industry. I sincerely hope that our Chinese "morticians", who are only responsible for disposing of the remains, can become "send-offs" who also care about the souls of the deceased at an early date.
There is also a movie in Japan related to funerals called "The Remains, Ten Days to Tomorrow". It is about the death of many people after the 2011 earthquake in Japan, and the civil servants of the municipal government are uneasy and helpless in the face of so many bodies. An elderly man who worked in a funeral home stepped forward as a disaster relief volunteer and led everyone to collect the remains. The old man is played by a famous old drama bone, Toshiyuki Nishida. He played a general in the movie "Dunhuang" in his youth, and in middle age, he starred in the series of movies "Diary of a Fishing Fan" with Rintaro of the Three Kingdoms. Nishida Toshiyuki, whose name is also very exquisite--- Confucius in the Analects said, "A gentleman wants to be sensitive to words and sensitive to deeds."
Okay, back to the point. In the movie, a young man discovers that the old man has been muttering to the body during the process of collecting the body. During the break, the young man asked him, "Why are you talking to the body?" Can you hear you talking? Hey, this old man really asked, a little embarrassed and said, "Did I say that?" I didn't say it! Yes, I just said they couldn't hear it! So why do I still say it? It seemed that he himself did not know what was going on. The story is moving forward, because the workload is heavy and the speed is fast, and a young man is a little rough in pressing the arm of the deceased when he is buried, when the old man who has always looked very kind suddenly bursts into anger and shouts: "You lighten up!" The body is not a corpse! ”
Pay your respects to the deceased
"The body is not a corpse", this sentence shocked the young people around him, and also made me feel deeply shocked! The Japanese word for "body" means exactly the same thing as the word "body" in Chinese, referring to the body of a person after death. However, the word "testament" is written in the same way as the Chinese traditional characters (遺); there is no Chinese "corpse" in Japanese, and the word "corpse" is generally written as "dead body", and the death of life and death refers to the body of the animal after death.
From a biological point of view, man, of course, is also a kind of animal. But from a sociological point of view, there is still a big difference between man and animal. There are many differences between people and animals, for example, people will be buried and animals will not --- today we will not talk about this, another day to talk about the topic. Let's get back to the main topic and talk about why "a body is not a corpse." When a person dies, whether it is a death without illness, or a sick and ineffective death, or a flying disaster, we who are alive should do two things for them: one is to collect the body, bury the body or cremated and bury the ashes, simply put, "dispose of the body"; the other thing is to sacrifice the deceased, to pay tribute to a past life, whether great or ordinary, but has come to this world, and this is also an emotional comfort to the family of the deceased.
A life is over, whether or not there is really a soul that leaves his body, but there is no doubt that he will leave a body. This body, from a biological point of view, can be called "corpse", but from a sociological point of view, it should be called "corpse". The word "corpse" represents a cold body with no signs of life, which should be disposed of as soon as possible; the word "body" represents a dead life full of respect and temperature. Of course, the temperature I am talking about here does not mean that the body has a temperature, but that the reason why we do not talk about the body but the body is that our living people are full of human brilliance and carry the temperature of human nature in their attitude towards past lives.
In the progress of the story, the young people begin to understand the feelings of the old people little by little, knowing that the old people treat the body as a living body before speaking to them, and the young people also take the initiative to set up the table as an altar. Seeing the young man's respect and understanding for life, the old man smiled with relief... I suggest you see this movie. As a movie, although it is not as good and romantic as "The Mortician", this film is very real and calm and cruel like a documentary, and it can be learned as a textbook for us funeral workers.
Toshiyuki Nishida plays an old mortician
I just talked about the temperature of the body, which is really a science and an art. It is said to be scientific because it involves "embalming"; it is called art because it involves human emotions. In modern society, people usually die in hospitals. In China, no sooner had a person died than the body was pulled to a funeral home and put into a freezer of minus ten degrees Celsius to freeze it. The funeral home we are talking about here is actually a crematorium, because it rarely provides you with funeral services such as vigil and farewell ceremony. Even if the farewell service is provided, it is also a hurried ten minutes and twenty minutes, and it is impossible to calmly bid farewell to the deceased, and the feelings of the deceased's family cannot be vented. Moreover, the remains were frozen in a freezer of minus ten degrees, which suddenly caused the family of the deceased to have a strong contrast with the "ice and fire double heaven" of the deceased relatives. Maybe everyone thinks there's no way! Originally, it was the "two heavens of ice and fire" between the yin and yang realms!
The funeral of my mother-in-law
In fact, it is not the way it is, it is entirely due to the simple funeral methods we have adopted. In Japan, for example, except for special remains that need to be preserved for a long time, the remains are generally not frozen. Japan, like us, has three days from death to cremation: death on the first day, vigil on the second day, farewell ceremony on the third day, and cremation on the third day. Instead of freezing the body, they placed the coffin in a lukewarm room and put some dry ice under the perishable parts of the head and internal organs. In general, it can be stored for three or four days in this way, which is obviously much more humane than freezing.
The final farewell of my mother-in-law
There is also a more humane antiseptic method in Europe and the United States, that is, the blood of the remains is withdrawn, and then a preservative is injected into the blood vessels. With this antiseptic method, the body can be preserved for a long time, and if you touch the body, although there is no temperature, it is not stiff, and it feels like the loved ones have not gone far.
People's feelings about the remains of relatives are very contradictory: on the one hand, there is nostalgia for relatives, on the other hand, there is fear and disgust for the remains, these two contradictory feelings rise and fall in the heart, and this disappears and disappears. Japanese and European and American practices make the remains neither corrupt nor frozen, until the body is cremated or buried can make the bereaved family's heart always full of nostalgia for their loved ones, and the actual situation has not destroyed this feeling, advanced funeral methods have minimized the fear and disgust of the bereaved family for death and the body, it can be said that it is very humane; and the practice of freezing the remains is solid (and some even deformed) can only make the bereaved family's heart full of nostalgia for relatives. But the objective situation has cruelly destroyed this precious feeling, and the cruel fact that the body has frozen into a lump of ice has caused deep damage to the bereaved family. Originally, the death of a loved one is already a very hurtful thing, and the rough and simple way of funeral has caused the bereaved family to suffer secondary injuries. It's just this kind of secondary injury, whether it's the bereaved family or our funeral workers are already numb and unconscious.
Rose Garden Former Executive Takada Gaku's Farewell Ceremony
How's it going, friends? At this point, you can understand why "the body is not a corpse", right? When you clearly understand the difference between a body and a corpse, you will find that there are still many backward, irrational, and disrespectful phenomena around us. For example, the room where the remains are parked in hospitals or crematoriums and funeral parlors is called the "spiritual security room" by the Japanese, that is, the room where the soul rests, and many of our places are still called "morgues"; the car that goes to pick up the body is called the "coffin car" by the Japanese, and many of our places are still called "body picking car"; the bag used to hold the body is called the "body bag" by the Japanese, and many of our places are still called "body bag"...
These distinctions in salutation actually reflect the differences in our perception of the body. For example, in Taiwan, the body is called "big body", which reflects their concept of "the dead are big" and is a respect for the body. And it is precisely because we have been educated in vulgar materialism for many years that we regard the body simply as a corpse, so we have not provided decent services, and even treated our deceased kind simply and even rudely under the banner of "thick and thin burial". You can "thick and thin burial", but the real meaning of "thin burial" should be that the funeral is not extravagant, the cemetery does not occupy too much land, and can be "thin" in material terms rather than "thin" in terms of emotions. In terms of emotion, "thin" is not "thin burial" but "thin feelings"!
The funeral rites of the Japanese are warm
In fact, the resources consumed by funeral services are not very many, and their main content still includes ritual services, as long as they are done carefully, they will do very well. As for the staff of many "funeral homes" (in fact, crematoriums) always say that "we have only a few farewell halls, and it is impossible to say goodbye calmly", then why can't we meet the needs of the people and build more real funeral homes dedicated to funerals? This is the design of institutions and policies! It is precisely because the funeral business has been monopolized by the government for so many years and there is no market competition that it has not been able to develop.
Fortunately, in the explanation of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the "Funeral Management Regulations" that is now being revised, there is finally a content that "in order to facilitate the masses to manage funerals, the services of receiving and transporting, storing, preserving, and plastic surgery that directly contact the remains are opened to the market", if it can really be implemented, this will be a major reform of China's funeral industry, and it will bring about a spring of funeral business! With the competition mechanism, China's funeral services should be improved, and the majority of funeral workers will gradually realize the truth that "the body is not a corpse" in the competition. And if we can understand this truth earlier than others, we may also be on the road to success!
【About the Author】
Cemetery designer, funeral planner, writer;
Representative Company of Hara Seiko Co., Ltd.;
Dean of Changchun Huaxia Cemetery College of Life and Culture;
Consultant of Beijing Star Light Design Consulting Co., Ltd.;
The Japanese Society of Funerary Cultural Societies;
He is the author of "Cemetery Art" and "I Am Chairman Mao's Red Soldier".