Bereavement and Consolation: Testimonies from Tokugawa Japan

In this study, Harold Bolitho translates and analyzes some accounts written by three Japanese men of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries about the death of a loved one - testimonies which challenge the impression that the Japanese accepted their bereavements with nonchalance.
The three journals were written by a young Buddhist priest mourning the death of his child; by the poet Issa, who recorded his father's final illness; and by a scholar and teacher who described his wife's losing struggle with diabetes. They show that while convention may have inhibited the men from expressing their grief openly, they were able to give voice to their sorrow in their writing. The three not only found their losses painful but seemed unable to find consolation: neither the prospect of reunion in Paradise nor any other consideration seems to have given them solace.