Death is undergoing a resurrection in Japan. Since Yojiro Takita won the Oscar for the best foreign-language film at the 81st Annual Academy Awards in February with Okuribito (Departures), there has been new-found interest in that final step in everyone's life.
Not all of the revelations have been positive, although an American businessman who set up a company providing pre-planning for funeral services hopes that a wider examination of the industry will help eliminate some of the 'sharp practices' that are employed to squeeze a few thousand yen out of grieving relatives when they are arguably at their most vulnerable.
The average Japanese funeral costs about US$25,000, said John Kamm, founder and chief executive of the Tokyo-based All Nations Society, which will perform a similar service for about half that figure, albeit without the fee for a Buddhist monk or grave plot, which are among the highest expenses.
For a monk to come and pray at the family home for a couple of hours can cost as much as US$10,000, including the payment for a Buddhist name that the deceased will take with him or her to the afterlife. Made up of five, seven or 11 kanji characters, the longer the name, the higher the price.
But Mr Kamm said he had sat in bars with monks as they dreamed up these posthumous names and seen them drive off later in Porsches.
'It's a murky world and not something that most people know about,' he said, adding that with corruption endemic in political life in Japan it would not be at all surprising if some of the politicians who were reluctant to regulate the industry were accepting kickbacks from the operators of the crematorium companies.