A memorial service is next held on the hundredth day. On this day the
provisional tablet which has hitherto been set up in the family shrine
is exchanged for the permanent one; and at the temple also, the tablet
which is there kept is taken down from the shelf on which are placed
the tablets of the recently deceased. On the day of decease every
month prayers are recited and a meal-tray set before the tablet in the
family shrine. The next memorial service at the temple takes place on
the first anniversary, after which comes the second anniversary which,
after the method of reckoning mentioned at the beginning of this
chapter, is called the third anniversary, so that a second anniversary
is unknown in the commemoration of a death or any other event. The
later anniversaries on which services are held are the seventh,
thirteenth, seventeenth, twenty-third, twenty-seventh, thirty-third,
thirty-seventh, fiftieth, and every fifty years thereafter.
[Illustration: A SHINTO FUNERAL PROCESSION.]
We have given above an outline of the ordinary Buddhist funeral,
though the procedure varies slightly with each sect of Buddhism. There
is, however, another form of funeral, which is performed with Shinto
rites. As, however, the two forms resemble each other in the main, we
may here give a few points of difference between them.
[Illustration: A SHINTO FUNERAL SERVICE.]
When a death takes place, it is reported at once to the shrine of the
local tutelary deity, and a Shinto priest called in. The date of the
funeral is then fixed. The body is laid in the upper part of a room,
and the face is covered with a white cloth; before it is set a table,
on which are put some washed rice, water, and salt, and a lamp is
lighted; and perfect silence reigns in the room. A tablet is placed
before the body and the ceremony of transferring the spirit of the
dead to the tablet is performed. Then a new bed and pillow are put in
the coffin and the body is laid on them with the face covered and a
new quilt put over it; and at the same time many favourite articles
of the deceased are laid beside him. The coffin is then filled up,
and the lid nailed on it. The body is never washed, but it is
sometimes wiped with a wet cloth if it has lain long in the sick-bed.
The coffin is laid on wooden rests, and rice, water, and salt offered
before it; it is next placed in a bier which has a roof like that of
a Shinto shrine. The funeral procession is led by the guide, who
is followed by bearers of lanterns and branches of _cleyera japonica_;
after them come priests and carriers of red and white flags with a box
of offerings between them. Next comes the officiating priest and after
him is carried a flag bearing the name of the deceased with his court
rank and title, if he had any; and then, more lanterns, followed by
the hearse and the rests behind it. The grave-post is carried next,
and after it marches the chief mourner, behind whom walk the near
relatives and after them, the general mourners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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