抄録
Recently, experiences of “death” have been estranged from daily life because of the increase
of the nuclear family and because of people dying in hospitals. Therefore, the Japanese youger
generations are ignorant of “life” and “esteem of the life”. In these condhitions, it is thought that
funeral rituals are important educational chances so that the children and the youger generations
might give serious consideration about “life” and “esteem of life”. Although these rituals have been
reduced to a shell because of the urbanization these days, it is thought that some customs of funeral
rituals will remain. So, this research was done for the purpose of receiving the suggestions
by surveying the meaning of the funeral rituals in the early Showa period when death education
took effect almost spontaneously
The results were shown as follows;
1) The funeral rituals in those days were carried out by the village people cooperatively in a
community.
2) The people in those days were present beside a dying person and spent more time and
labor for funeral rituals by themselves. Those behaviors were very useful for good grieving.
3) It was thought that they learned about mortality and the dignity of life by means of watching,
hearing, touching and smelling in the process of funeral rituals.
4) It was suggested that funeral rituals player an important role for death education in those
days, and it is suggested the same mean for death education in the present days.
These results suggest that death education, including funeral rituals, plays an important role in
the school education for the present children who lack experiences with death. We advocate that
the all subjects might be suitable to promote death education and many chances to learn it might
be put into operation.
https://ror.org/018ct7v08 