
Where to Bury the Dead? A Pressing Dilemma for a Diversifying Japan
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The Mayor Takes a Stand
“Japan is my second motherland,” warmly declares Khan Muhammad Tahir Abbas, a professor at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. Khan describes coming to Japan from his native Pakistan in 2001 to pursue a PhD at Kyūshū University and quickly falling in love with the country. “The Japanese are a very kind and honest people,” he says. Moved by this affinity, he chose to take citizenship and settle permanently in the country.
Khan, who is Muslim, is forthright in professing his affection for Japan. But when the topic of burial arises his normally soft countenance stiffens noticeably. As head of the Beppu Muslim Association, a religious organization based in Beppu, Ōita Prefecture, Khan has worked tirelessly to establish a Muslim cemetery in the Kyūshū Region. Japan has a very high rate of cremation—over 99% according to government statistics—but Khan explains that it is not an option for Muslims, as the practice is prohibited in Islam. Compounding the issue is that the handful of cemeteries that accommodate burials are predominantly in the Kantō region around Tokyo, in the east of the country. Kyūshū, where Khan is based, and the neighboring Chūgoku region of western Honshū have none, a situation that he describes leaves Muslims in these areas little recourse but to pay the high cost of transporting the body of a loved one for burial at a far-off site. “It’s an unacceptable state of affairs,” he says. “It must be resolved as soon as possible by finding a local site for burials.”
Beppu Muslim Association head Khan Muhammad Tahir Abbas during an interview on October 9, 2020. He has been a professor at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University since 2007. (© Suzuki Kantarō)
Khan’s frustrated tone is understandable considering his struggles to establish Kyūshū’s first Muslim cemetery. In December 2018, the Muslim association secured land in Hiji, a town neighboring Beppu, to use as a graveyard, which was slated to open in 2020. The site, tucked away in the hills far from any residences, seemed ideal. There was a sense of optimism around the project, with stories featuring in newspapers and on television.
The site for the planned Muslim cemetery in Hiji, as seen on October 7, 2020. It is in the surrounding hills, 15 minutes by car from the town center. (© Suzuki Kantarō)
Things took a turn, though, when town authorities chose to withhold permission for the cemetery in response to locals’ concerns. With the project at a standstill, members of the Muslim association and residents opposed to the cemetery came together to work out their differences. These meetings led to the two sides eventually agreeing to a new site on land owned by the town. With the election of Abe Tetsuya as Hiji’s new mayor in August 2024, however, the plan is now at risk of being scrapped. Abe, who won by a sizable margin running in opposition to the cemetery, has declared that he will not approve the sale of municipal land offered under the proposal, effectively barring the Muslim association from establishing a graveyard in Hiji. Khan says he will continue to engage with town authorities on the issue, but the outlook for success is bleak.
Cremation Nation
The rise of Japan’s cremation rate to one of the highest in the world is a relatively new development. As recent as the 1950s, cremation accounted for only around half of funeral services, with burials remaining a common custom in rural areas. Over the subsequent decades, though, it has become standard practice that is devoid of its earlier religious associations. According to Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare figures from 2022, for instance, of the 1.63 million people who died that year, an overwhelming 99.97% were cremated, with just 490 burials taking place.
While most Japanese today consider cremation to be a nonreligious practice, burial for Muslims is deeply wrapped up in their faith. Like the other Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Christianity, interment in Islam is closely associated with the belief that the dead will one day be resurrected. But whereas many Christian denominations have come to accept cremation, the vast majority of Muslims consider burial a prerequisite for rebirth.
Japanese law does not prohibit burial, but there is the practical matter that as cremation has become the dominant practice, the number of accommodating cemeteries has significantly dwindled. This had made securing sites where burials can be carried out according to Islamic practice a pressing issue for Muslims across Japan.
On the surface, the solution seems straightforward: build more burial-friendly cemeteries. The Beppu Muslim Association as a recognized religious corporation has the legal authority to establish and operate graveyards. (Other organizations with this right include local governments and public interest corporations.) It had followed the legal procedures and municipal directives in expectation of attaining a permit for establishing and managing a cemetery on the site and had even garnered the consent of many locals. What, then, is behind the opposition to the project?
Unaddressed Concerns
Looking elsewhere in Japan reveals that the resistance to the Beppu Muslim Association’s plan is not an isolated incident. I covered an analogous situation in Sakuragawa, Ibaraki Prefecture, where plans to open plots at a site managed by a Buddhist temple in the city were derailed by local resistance.
In the Sakuragawa case, the temple, acting in proxy for local Muslim associations, planned to make a portion of its land available for burials and applied for a permit, conducting all the necessary negotiations with the local authorities on its own. No public hearings were held, as in Beppu, as they were not mandated for acquiring a permit, which the city hall issued in September 2023. When residents became aware of the plan, though, they quickly began to voice their concerns. Facing mounting opposition, the Muslim organizations behind the project asked that the permit be withdrawn, and in March 2024 the venture was abandoned.
The developments in Hiji and Sakuragawa demonstrate that the main hurdles to establishing Muslim cemeteries lie not in legal red tape but in winning the backing of residents. Looking at both cases, resistance by residents revolved around three primary issues: (1) concern over the impact of burials on public hygiene; (2) low trust in the process owing to an unfamiliarity with Islam; and (3) feelings of having been excluded from the decision-making process.
The Muslim associations in venting their frustration reason that they went above and beyond what was required under the law in pursuing their plans. While it is easy to sympathize with their plight, at the same time, the stance demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the workings of Japanese society. By failing to address the underlying concerns of residents, they touched off an opposition movement that doomed their efforts.
Muslims pray at the Central Kyūshū Masjid in Beppu on October 9, 2020. The mosque serves some 300 Muslims, mostly exchange students, living in the region. (© Suzuki Kantarō)
Human Nature
The resistance to Muslim cemeteries offers an example in NIMBY, or “not in my backyard,” thinking, characterized by residents opposing locating something unpleasant but necessary—often a large-scale infrastructure project like a garbage incinerator—in their local area. NIMBY is a powerful force that with enough momentum, as Hiji and Sakuragawa illustrate, has the potential to alter if not outright derail projects.
While covering the issue of Muslim cemeteries, I spoke with many locals who unabashedly cited “nimbyism” in their opposition. “I don’t have anything against Muslims,” one opponent exclaimed to me. “I know there’s a public need for a burial cemetery. I just don’t want it in my neighborhood.”
Japanese unfamiliarity with Islam is a major barrier for Muslim associations in swaying such individuals to their cause. While the Muslim population in Japan has increased in recent years—Tanada Hirofumi, professor emeritus of Waseda University and expert on Islam, estimates it to be around 350,000 as of 2024—on the whole Muslim communities remain on the fringes of society. I have visited numerous mosques in my reporting, but it is unrealistic to expect average Japanese to do the same of their own accord simply out of a desire to deepen their understanding of Muslims’ views.
However, it is important to realize that Muslims are part of the changing fabric of Japanese society. Okai Hirofumi, an assistant professor at Kyoto Sangyō University specializing in Islamic culture, points out that the struggles of Muslim to secure burial plots is taking place amid dynamic change in the Japanese funeral industry. He argues that as society diversifies, it has created a pressing need to accommodate a broadening range of burial practices.
Okai is correct in his assessment. More and more people today are shunning traditional end-of-life practices and seeking out options that reflect their own values, such as choosing burial trees in lieu of headstones or foregoing graves altogether and having their ashes scattered in the ocean or some other beloved location. Growing demand for Muslim burial sites is one aspect of this shift, but it is one that continues to evade a simple solution, much to the consternation of the Islamic faithful in Japan.
Prayers at the Masjid Nishi-Chiba, part of the Chiba Islamic Culture Center in Chiba’s Chūō Ward. Photographed on May 20, 2022. (© Suzuki Kantarō)
We must recognize that the rising demand for Muslim cemeteries is tied to the pace of demographic change in Japan. As the Japanese society ages rapidly, authorities have responded to the dwindling working population by turning to foreign laborers to fill the gap. Muslims are naturally among this influx of overseas workers, and with the current trend in immigration expected to continue into the foreseeable future, more will settle in Japan. Burial and related issues, then, have the potential to escalate from their limited regional scope today to become a concern in many places nationwide.
Finding a fundamental solution requires shifting the onus from the Muslim community and placing it at the feet of society as a whole. If Japan hopes to achieve social integration and multicultural coexistence as it diversifies, there will need to be a dialogue with Muslims and others who desire to be buried. The central question is whether Japanese can come to embrace Muslims as neighbors and put aside their concerns to open the way for the establishment of cemeteries in local communities.
(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: The Honjō Kodama Cemetery in Saitama, which offers burial plots for Muslims and people of other faiths. Photo taken on May 25, 2022. © Suzuki Kantarō.)