抖阴旅行射

How do communities change the way they bury their dead? The traditional narrative holds that postwar Japanese funerals became more "modern" as community bonds weakened and professional funeral companies took over. But Aya Oba offers a different perspective.

Drawing on research from Mogami, a small town in northern Japan, Oba shows that it was ordinary residents - not governments or businesses - who transformed how funerals and weddings were conducted. Local people formed mutual-aid groups to share costs, pool resources, and create new customs together.

Her lecture raises a compelling question: who really shapes the way a society cares for its dead, and what does the answer reveal about modern life?

Date: June 27, 2026
Time: 4 - 5:30 p.m.
Venue: Tohoku University Kawauchi Campus, Multimedia Education and Research Complex, 6F (map)
Language: English
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抖阴旅行射 the Lecturer:

Aya Oba is an assistant professor at Joetsu University of Education and a sociologist of religion. She earned her Ph.D. from Taisho University in 2022, with a dissertation on the postwar transformation of Japanese funerals. Her research traces how migration, local mutual-aid associations and reform campaigns such as the New Life Movement reshaped the way communities care for their dead. She has held a postdoctoral fellowship at Japan's National Museum of Japanese History and was a visiting researcher at McMaster University in Canada. Her first book appeared in 2026, and she is now developing a comparative study of funeral reform in Japan and China.

This lecture is organised by the Department of Japanese Religion and Intellectual History at Tohoku University's Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, and supported by the Toshiba International Foundation.