Via The Daily Undertaker, here is a non-fiction story by a writer named Marie Mutsuki Mockett entitled “Letters from a Japanese Crematorium”, as published in the online version of the literary magazine AGNI. It is a deeply personal story, but it is also a very interesting peek inside an element of Japanese culture that is generally kept private. Mockett is a Japanese-American, and the story conveys the duality that comprises her heritage as someone from a culture but not really of that culture.
The story appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of AGNI, and Mockett wrote about it here on her own blog, which includes many of her own photographs of the trip. I have borrowed her photo of the entry into the crematorium itself above. On her front page it says that her first novel, entitled “Picking Bones From Ash” is due out next year. Keep your eyes peeled.
