This past Saturday, Mr. Yamagata, the ex-principal of Mukaiyama who retired in March, died suddenly of what I was told was an “aneurysm of the aorta.” This was very unexpected. His parents are still alive, both in their 90s, as well as his wife and three grown daughters. Mr. Kamiyama told me that even though he had been a principal for many years, and at many schools, he did not like it as much because he could no longer teach classes. After retiring, he got a part-time job as a world history teacher again at one of the private high schools in Sendai, and was eagerly looking forward to teaching in the classroom again. He actually had Mr. Kasahara as one of his students, back before he became a principal.

Mr. Kamiyama sent me an email to tell me the news yesterday while I was at Minami. He said that since the funeral will be held during the day later this week, many of the teachers could not go and were planning to go to the vigil this evening. I asked if I could go as well. Mr. Yamagata was a very kind man, who always took time to speak to me in his very minimal English. He was the one who, last fall, took me for tea at a traditional teahouse and told me all about his family and growing up in Sendai. When he retired, he had a friend who is a potter make custom tea mugs for everyone on the staff.

Because he had been a principal at so many schools, taught many people, and worked at the kencho for 3 years as well, his vigil was completely full. After school this afternoon, I went with Mr. Kamiyama to the funeral hall. When we came in, we signed the guest registry and handed the attendants special funerary envelopes with ¥3000 inside. Then the attendants, most of them teachers from Mukaiyama, gave each person a token bag, which apparently has green tea and some other kind of small gift inside, as well as a card with the death announcement on it.

The vigil was held in an auditorium. Almost all of the regular seats were full when we arrived, so the ushers were trying to fill in the empty seats. There ended up being two empty in the front row of the left section, and we were put there. Mr. Kamiyama was rather uncomfortable, because those seats are usually for people very close to the deceased, but it did afford me an unobstructed view of everything. After we had come in, they brought in extra chairs and filled in all of the area in the back of the auditorium, in between the tables that had been set up with food for people who were staying afterward.

At exactly 6:00pm, the vigil began with the raising of the thin curtain on the stage at the front. There was a display covering the wall of a model temple as the background for a center display of white orchids surrounding the portrait of Mr. Yamagata, smiling and happy, more casual than he ever was at work. On the tier below this were hundreds of unopened white chrysanthemums arranged on ferns, which gradually grew to palm fronds and unopened white day lilies at the sides of the display. From the back of the room, a bell began to ring, and three priests proceeded to the stage. The bell ringer, dressed in purple and tan robes, took his place on the right side of the stage, on the chair in front of the two gongs, one large and one small, shaped like bowls. The priest carrying a tall stick of incense, dressed in light green and saffron, took the chair at the right, in front of the carved wooden drum. The head priest, in burgundy with gold embroidery, took the central seat, facing the display, in front of an incense bowl. They all began to chant, with gong ringing from the right, rhythmic rubbing of the head priest’s prayer beads, and putting more incense into the bowl at certain intervals. The chanting had a constant underlying drone because at least one of them was always keeping it going, even when the others had stopped to draw breath. I’m not actually sure they were all chanting the same parts in unison anyway. At times it seemed more like a round. Since I’ve never seen a Buddhist chanting ritual before, I don’t really know.

After about 20 minutes, the gong ringer began to ring the smaller gong more often, the head priest rubbed his prayer beads for longer, and then the large gong was struck with finality, bringing the impressive chanting to an end. The gong ringer began another chant on his own, while the priest on the left picked up his stick and began to beat the carved drum in front of him. The announcer at the microphone on one side of the auditorium stepped forward and announced that Mr. Yamagata’s wife and perhaps his brother would now light the first incense at the 10 or so boxes at the edge of the stage for that purpose. Then his children and parents came forward and did so. Then everyone else in the auditorium did the same. The boxes held loose grain incense on one side, in a separate compartment, and on the other side of the divider was a bed with a piece of hot charcoal in it to sprinkle the incense over. As the last people were coming forward to do this, Mr. Kamiyama motioned to me to move with them to the back of the auditorium so we wouldn’t be in the front row anymore.

After everyone was back in their seats again, either Mr. Yamagata’s wife or one of his daughters, I could no longer see, made a short speech, and everyone bowed. Then the priests recessed out, ringing the hand bell, and everyone made their way out. Mr. Kamiyama said this was much shorter than an actual funeral service would be, since it was only half an hour, but he couldn’t really explain what would be done differently at a full funeral service. He did say, however, that is required by law in Japan that all bodies be cremated.