When you grow up with parents from two very different countries and two even more different faiths you get to learn and take part of various rituals that teach you about the world and even a bit about yourself.
With a Japanese mother who follows a Shinto/Buddhist tradition and a Mexican father in the Catholic faith, Sofía Villafán flew out to Japan to mourn her late grandfather in a Shinto ceremony. There she found herself in a complex ritual that she shared with me.
The passing of a loved one marks the moment when one becomes a spirit. A priest then gives the deceased a new name—kaimyo homyo. For this new stage, the deceased also is given a butsudan, a sort of shrine where there will be an image (in this case a Buddha) to represent him or her. At this butsudan the loved ones will bring flowers, food, anything of his/her liking, daily. This is an example of where you can see how valued ancestors are in Japan. Sofía says, “even after death, a person continues to exist in a sort of divine way—without being a god, but being close to him. This is why we spoil our deceased in the butsudan”
After the deceased is incinerated, there is a ceremony for gathering the ashes, a kotsuage. In this ritual, the bones that do not burn completely are removed from the ashes by loved ones with chopsticks and the placed in an urn.