![]() ![]() Utsunomiya-based Balloon Kobo lets families have the ashes of their loved ones scattered over the area of their choice. The firm charges ¥300,000 for its Shooting Star Memorial service. These include launching remains and releasing them in space, whereupon they circle the Earth before plummeting through the atmosphere like a shooting star. Portions of the ashes of three Japanese were part of the space-release payload on Celestis’s fourteenth launch on November 6, 2015.īalloons for carrying a loved one’s ashes aloftĪnother US celestial funeral operator, Elysium Space, has been marketing its services in Japan since October 2013. Its service offerings include launching remains atop a rocket and releasing them in space for ¥450,000, placing remains in earth orbit aboard a satellite for ¥950,000, and placing remains on the moon for ¥2,500,000. ( Ginga means “galaxy” in Japanese.) The company is the Japanese sales agency for the US celestial funeral operator Celestis. Among the luminaries served have been the television screenwriter and producer Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series the astronaut Gordon Cooper and, the first lunar interment, the astronomer Eugene Shoemaker.Ĭapsules for launching portions of loved ones’ ashes into space aboard satellites traceable with smartphonesĪ focal point at the December trade show was the space-interment exhibit by Osaka-based Ginga Stage. Space interment has been available in the United States since 1997. The services on offer included encapsulating the deceased’s ashes and launching the capsules into space-a celestial version of scattering ashes at sea. Capturing the most attention at the show were space funerals. ![]() Two hundred twenty companies from Japan’s funeral industry took part in a trade show in December 2015 at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition complex. Meanwhile, Japanese are beginning to push back against the funeral industry’s chronic lack of transparency in regard to pricing, prompting funeral providers to respond with standardized fees for such services as the traditional officiation by Buddhist priests. Responses to Japan’s funerary issues include new options such as space burial, where for a fee a portion of a loved one’s ashes can be launched into the cosmos. Also on the increase is the number of uncared-for graves. People are increasingly opting for smaller funerals and for greater personalization of services. Demographic aging and other social transformation under way in Japan are occasioning changes in funeral practices. ![]()
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