Mechanical grievability: urban graves for the solo dead in Japan
Urban columbaria that store cremated remains in a warehouse and deliver them by automation to a grave (only) upon visitation are one of the newest innovations in mortuary deathscapes in Japan. Conserving the space needed for a cemetery and the time required for grave visitation, such delivery-style columbaria embody convenience. Yet they also provide a technological solution to the social precarity facing many Japanese today of being solo in death. With a high aging population, declining rates of both marriage and childbirth, and more citizens living and dying alone, what was once conventional - a family grave to enter with a successor to tend to one’s spirit after that - is becoming a thing of the past. Yet, without a grave, the deceased become “disconnected souls.” That the automated columbarium offers a home of sorts and grievability of a kind with a prosthetics of sociality is what this essay proposes.
