Tokyo to build new crematoriums to meet surging demand

Death is a growth industry that no one’s happy about.

There has been a lot of talk about the aging population in Japan and how it’s affecting society and the economy. But a more immediate concern is how to handle the influx of people currently dying across the country. 

According to estimates, the number of deaths per year is expected to swell to a peak of 1.65 million in 2040, but with the current number over 1.5 million, Japan looks poised to overshoot that estimate considerably. Large cities in particular are starting to feel the strain, since the common method of internment in Japan is cremation. Luckily, this means cemetery space can be kept rather small, but the facilities to perform cremations are limited.

There have been reports of crematoriums in Chiba Prefecture issuing wait times of as many as 10 days, and supply and demand has also seen the costs of such services rise as well. In normal businesses, this would attract other competitors who would eventually bring down prices, but that is especially difficult for crematoriums as they are very costly to set up and zoning laws make it very hard to even find a place to put a facility for burning human remains.

▼ Urayasu Crematorium is located right beside Tokyo Disneyland, you can see just a bit of it if you look to your left along with the Tokyo Skytree in the distance.

Nowhere is this situation more severe then the dense metropolis of Tokyo, whose government recently decided to take matters into their own hands and are drafting a proposal to build a series of small-scale publicly run crematoriums throughout the 23 wards. They will focus on adding locations where they are needed most, and if necessary, relax zoning laws to allow them to fit.

That’s not to say the private sector is sitting around doing nothing. In recent years, Japan has seen the emergence of what is colloquially called “itai hotels” (literally “corpse hotels”). These are facilities that refrigerate the body so it is preserved until cremation can be made available, while also allowing loved ones to visit in a respectful, home-like environment. True to the name, they even offer rates comparable to a hotel’s, ranging from 10,000 to 200,000 per day depending on size and quality.

▼ News report showing the inside of an itai hotel

The real difficulty in these projects is that, despite how serious the problem is now, it’s destined to be a temporary one because of Japan’s shrinking population, making it harder to make a case for large-scale infrastructure investment. At least if governments take the initiative in building new crematoriums, they can be shut down more easily when no longer needed, and itai hotels are more or less standard commercial facilities that can be easily repurposed.

It’s an awkward situation that Japan is still trying to feel its way around, but it’s something many other countries are going to have to face in the coming years. Hopefully, others can learn from what goes right and what goes wrong here.

Source: TBS News Dig, Yomiuri Shimbun Online, YTV
Top image: Pakutaso
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