UC San Diego

This dissertation examines the ways that ancestor memorial shapes the experience of aging in Japan. Ancestor memorial is a popular form of mourning in Japan that helps individuals manage feelings of grief and loss through the use of cultural symbols. Ancestor memorial is also effective in managing other forms of loss that arise with the experience of old age. If this is the case, it would seem that ancestor memorial gives a unique indication of how older adults in Japan cope with the pain of loss and construct a new identity that can manage that pain. This dissertation addresses this point, and draws on the work of Erikson's eight stages of development, as well as the theories of attachment, emotion and coping in order to learn how religious experience among older adults shapes their understandings of themselves and of the aging process. This research is based on 21 months of field- research in Kyoto, Japan, where I conducted ethnographic interviews and participant observation with the elderly. What I discovered in interviewing and observing older adults' religious practice is that mourning not only transforms the identities of lost loved ones, but it also provides an provides an opportunity to reflect one's own identity as an older adult. This reflection during mourning is a kind of remembering, or reminiscence that transforms the relationship between the living and the deceased. The four case studies of this dissertation illustrate different facets of this process of mourning and memorial: grief and bereavement, intergenerational relationships, tradition and change, and growing old. In the conclusion, I summarize the findings and suggest the possibility for pursuing the questions raised in this study further