In Asia, Lying in Coffins Helps You Live Longer

The name of the event was “Experience Being Placed in a Coffin”.

You drink beer, eat snacks, and talk about death. Then you lie down in a coffin and pretend you are dead.

These events are happening in Japan and sponsored by funeral homes and coffin manufacturers.

“In Japan, there’s been an expression that if you lie in a coffin while you are alive, you’ll live longer,” reads Kotaku, a blog about life in Japan.

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The events, according to the blog, are being boosted by a bestselling book by Dr. Jinichi Nakamura called, If You Want a Peaceful Death, Don’t Have Anything To Do with Medical Care: Recommendations for Dying of Natural Causes. In the book, Dr. Nakamura spends time inside a coffin.

“The thing I recommend most for you to contemplate your own death in concrete terms is the experience of lying in a coffin,” writes the doctor.

And it’s not just old people going to the events. As reported by Nikkei, a national Japanese newspaper, people in their twenties are attending as well.

“My parents are both approaching the age that they’ll need nursing care,” said one 26 year-old, “and I wanted to participate in this event to think and learn about what’s next.”

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It’s not the first time Digital Dying has written about the benefits of lying in coffins.

Coffin Academy, in South Korea, is a motivational seminar intended to inspire people to lead more fulfilling lives by simulating death. During the program, which costs $35, you decorate your tombstone, write a will, say your final goodbyes then climb into a coffin.

“The moment I got out of the casket I felt like I was born again,” a Korean business man told a reporter, “I’m going to go give my wife a big hug.”

The practice of “lying in coffins” has found a home at a Buddhist temple in Thailand, too.

“The ritual involves participants lying in coffins while monks perform death rites on them as if they are already dead,” reads one Thai website.

Participants say they are reborn after the ritual, with all their bad karma behind them. Other people explain that the ritual helps to fool spirits into thinking they are already dead, allowing them to start their lives afresh, like newborns. Some people even claim that while lying in coffins they have met the spirits of their ancestors.

Digital Dying has also written about the beauty of placing people in coffins, such as seen in the Japanese film, Departures, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film a few years back. The movie follows a young man named Daigo who loses his job as a cellist and returns to the bleak provincial town of his youth. The only work available is as an encoffineer, or nokanshi, the individual who prepares dead bodies for viewing.

Daigo learns that despite the public’s general lack of respect for the job and the difficulties of handling dead bodies, there is great honor in the profession. There is also great beauty involved in preparing bodies. The movie portrays the act as something like making a painting, or an exquisite platter of sushi.

“The encoffineer gently scrubs the body with a warm wash cloth,” reads a 2009 Digital Dying post titled, In Japan, everything is a beautiful corpse. “Stray whiskers are shaved from the face and cream that softens the skin is applied…[The family] helps the encoffineer lift the body into the coffin then they say their goodbyes.”