Frying Pan Kuyō

Kuyō is not a word, it’s a culture and can only be understood that way. Westerners don’t understand what it really is. Never one specific thing or action, it’s so deeply woven into the entire fabric of Japanese religious culture that it’s hard to see or explain. You have to experience it over time.

Yet it manifests regularly in various, sometimes amusing ways. I was reminded of this recently when helping a fellow priest with a memorial service at his temple. The traditional time between a Buddhist funeral service (the cremation), and the burial (Nokotsu) is 49 days although it’s flexible these days depending on family circumstance and the priest.

Just a few days after a temple member passed away recently, he got a call from the daughter in-law asking if they could move the 49th day burial ceremony date up.

“When do you want to do it?”, he asked.

“Tomorrow.” she said.

He was very surprised and after some discussion, with her not giving any clear reason, she finally came out with it: “I keep having the same dream every night.” The angry father in-law was strangling her every night in the same exact reoccurring dream.

They discussed it in depth and the background story emerged. The father in-law had owned and run a successful yōshoku restaurant all of his life, but when he finally retired due to advancing age and his wife passing away, he lived with his son and daughter in-law. The father was a very serious man and watched the daughter in-law’s cooking with a vigilant and highly critical eye. And mouth. The rice should be cooked this way, the miso that way. Every single meal, no detail escaped him.

Eventually it became too much for the daughter in-law but no amount of pleading or arguing from the son could change the father’s attitude. The son and his wife decided it would be best for all for the father to live separately. That’s the arrangement they put in place and the father ended up dying alone.

Instead of changing the burial date, my colleague, who has a special kind of intuition from his long experience as a Reidan Master, explained that the father was suffering in the 49 day period which is traditionally the time when the soul leaves this world and crosses the Sanzu River (River of Three Crossings) on the way to the next world. This crossing is perilous and depends on the good and bad deeds one committed during their lifetime.

My colleague has a much simpler view, any suffering, or lack thereof, crossing from this world to the next is determined by our heart when we die, which is to say it all depends on the sum of our lives and how we live them, what we cherish, what we hold onto, what we let go.

He urged sticking out the entire 49 days. But each and every day the son and wife should sit in front of the family altar where the father’s urn rested and chant Odaimoku while praying for forgiveness for not living together. ‘In your heart, tell him that you tried but it was beyond your strength to see it through’, he said. Kuyō is not ancestor worship as westerners always explain it, the spirit and earthly realms are connected. Performing an act or making an offering in this world for departed loved (and sometimes not so loved) ones, is seen as benefiting them which ultimately benefits us.

The husband and wife followed the advice, burning incense, chanting and praying every day, but the wife’s reoccurring dream did not stop or change, every night the angry father was strangling her. My colleague urged them to keep chanting and pray for forgiveness, which they did. On exactly the 49th day the wife had a different dream. The father in law was in  his beloved restaurant kitchen, smiling and waving his fry pan. She never saw him in any dream after that. With calm, relieved minds the husband and wife buried the father, knowing that he had peacefully moved on.

This kind of experience is a common one, especially in the countryside, as the 49 day passage is understood to be a time when the deceased’s soul is still around. Strange occurrences or dreams happen, but it’s normal. A Japanese friends’ mother has the unnerving habit of receiving visits from old friends who’d stop by for a quick chat and say goodbye like aways, only to find out that they had died days before. They were just saying goodbye. It’s no big deal. Just part of life, which kuyō is.