CREMATION IN JAPAN.
[TO TILE EDITOR Op THE " EPEOTIaton..] S111,-112 a notice of Bishop Fraser's address at the opening of the Social Science Congress at Manchester., in the Spectator of October 4th, it is said,—" He will find, an inquiry, that the expense of really destroying a body is too great." A few months ago I visited the cremation-ground at Meguro, Tokeigo, with the interpreter to the Governor of Ttikeiga, who gave me every information on the subject of cremation, as now practised in Japan. The building is of plaster, with an earthen floor, with stone supports for bodies. The chimneys are wide, and are carried to a considerable height, and there .is no escape of .disagreeable effluvium over the neighbour- hood. The bodies, in the ordinary wooden chests which are used for burial, are placed upon piles of faggots at eight p.m., and are totally consumed by six a.m. The relations are admitted early in the morning, and the ashes are collected and placed in urns. The scale of charges is 3e. 6d., 78, 6d., Lis., 20s., the process in each case being the same, the only difference being That the highest charge ensures a solitary chamber ; while for
be consumed in company with five the lowed, the corpse may
others, each, of course, occupying a separate stone platform. The Governor of TokeigO subsequently supplied me with a paper giving some reasons for the withdrawal of the prohibition of cremation, among which arc the expense of urban interments, the danger to the health of the living, and the increasing diffi- culty of finding room for the dead in the neighbourhood of largo cities. On the day on which I visited Meguro, out of twelve bodies which were awaiting cremation, ten were of persons of the poorest class. Cremation is the general rule in the Month sect of the Buddhists, the most enlightened and spiritual among the sects into which Japanese Buddhism has broken up, and one which holds the immortality of the soul as one of the leading articles of its creed.—I am, Sir, Sze., Honor House, Oban, October 14th. ISABELLA L. Bum. [The prices of faggots in Japan and England differ.—En. Spectator.]
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