Crematory Is Booked? Japan Offers Corpse Hotels

The minimalist rooms at the Hotel Relation in Japan are simply furnished with twin beds and a flat-screen television on the wall. Each room offers plastic-wrapped toothbrushes and cups in the bathroom. A short jaunt across the hall brings you to the rooms with the corpses; this particular hotel is shared by both the living and the dead.

Many Japanese families try to avoid the expense of a large funeral and the cost of a traditional service by seeking out places like the Hotel Relation. Here, families may stay overnight with their deceased loved ones while saving on costs. These hotels starting appearing about five years ago in some of Japan’s largest cities in response to high funeral prices, the ever-growing number of deaths per year, and an overburdened system that is poorly equipped to handle the aging Japanese population. While some neighborhoods have protested the proximity of these hotels to their homes, their proliferation is likely to continue as the need for their services continues to grow.

See Mokoto Rich, Crematory Is Booked? Japan Offers Corpse Hotels, The New York Times, July 1, 2017.

Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention