Western-Style Gravestones Becoming More Popular in Japan

A survey in Japan found that more people are buying Western-style gravestones instead of traditional Japanese ones.

Gravestone Survey

A survey was conducted online from March to May 2025 by the Japan Stone Memorial Association, a Tokyo-based organization consisting of around 150 retailers of gravestones and memorial stones nationwide, with a total of 818 valid responses received.

Among the survey respondents, 51.0% purchased a gravestone and a cemetery plot at the same time, while 46.1% placed a new gravestone on cemetery plot they already owned. The remaining 2.9% included other options, such as placing a gravestone on their own residential property.

Japanese-style gravestone (left) next to a Western-style gravestone; both images are generated by computer graphics. (Courtesy the Japan Stone Memorial Association)

The most common type of gravestone, chosen by 51.6% of the respondents, was a simple Western-style gravestone, for an increase of 9.4 percentage points compared to the survey result in 2016. Meanwhile, traditional Japanese-style gravestones were chosen by 28.5%, which is a decrease of 9.7 points. In terms of regional differences, Western-style gravestones are more common in eastern Japan, while Japanese-style gravestones are more prevalent in western Japan.

The most common purchasing price for a gravestone according to the survey, setting aside costs for acquiring a cemetery plot, was ¥1.5 million to ¥2 million, which was the price range for 20.3% of the survey respondents. The next most common price, accounting for 18.7%, was from ¥2 million to ¥3 million. The average purchasing price for a gravestone was ¥1,695,000, down ¥15,000 compared to the previous year. Over the past four years the average price has remained around ¥1.7 million.

Data Sources

Survey of Purchasers of Gravestones (Japanese) from the Japan Stone Memorial Association, 2025.