현대 일본의 장례문화에 관한 연구 - 도쿄 호텔장례를 중심으로 -

Abstract

For the purposes of this article, a cultural anthropological research on hotel funeral, which is a funeral that held at the hotel in tokyo. In this article, I explore the intermediary role of eight hotels within Keio plaza hotel, New Otani hotel, Marriott hotel, Royal Park Hotel, Grand Palace hotel, Imperial Hotel, Okura Hotel, Price Hotel. I also focus on how the hotels successfully entered the funeral market in Japan. After the bursting of Japan’s financial and real estate bubble of the early 1990s, hotel profits have dropped dramatically, particularly in the wedding market. With the growing recognition of declining profits, Syaso market draw attention to the hotel industry. By using the heritage of wedding decorating skills and of hospitality skills, hotel industry seems ready to move on to the funeral market. However, the entry of funeral market raised a new problem in coexisting two rituals―wedding and funeral, life and death, purity and impurity. Connecting the current wave of self-determinism against traditional funeral customs in the 1980s, the hotel industry seeks to harness the current desire for self-expression on funeral by channeling it with the replacing traditional customs with the new materials that representing the individual.