butsudan

is not an object for reflection or debate, rather it provides moral guidance to the living, and thus is very much a part of the family, as before death.

For the Japanese the experience of the butsudan resides in the practices which attach to it: it is not an object for reflection or debate. In this way departed ancestors continue to live as real members of the ie: in Befu’s (1971) words, ‘they provide moral guidance to the living’, and are ‘very much a part o the family, as they were before their death’

butsudan, n.All

butsudan