Celebrating creation and commemorating life : Ritualizing pet death in the U.S. and Japan

This essay focuses on contemporary funerary and memorial rituals for pets in Japan. With about 900 pet cemeteries throughout the country, Japan has the highest number of pet cemeteries in the industrialized world, and more than one in ten are located at Buddhist temples. Even pet cemeteries not operated by Buddhist temples usually have ties to Buddhist clerics who officiate during rituals on major holy days dedicated to the dead such as the equinoxes and festival of the dead in mid-summer. In other words, Buddhist mortuary rites for pets have become an institutionalized practice. I argue that the reasons for these developments are related to demographic changes that, on the one hand, have spurred pet keeping and the integration of pets into household life and, on the other, have provided incentives for Buddhist temples to branch out into offering mortuary rituals for pets.