Here’s why the Japanese keep their dead relatives in this hotel

Staying in a nice hotel is surely something that most of us would dream of while alive; but imagine the dead taking a short rest in a chic hotel before being ushered to their final resting place? Well, at least the dead in Japan can think of this luxury. Yes, the trend of preserving the body of the loved ones in a hotel has fast caught up in Japan.

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Interestingly, like Indians, the Japanese too take the body home from the hospital and observe the funeral through the night and next morning in the presence of friends, family and neighbours. In the afternoon, the corpse is taken to the crematory for the final rites. The Hotel Relation or ‘Itai Hoteru’ in Osaka, Japan, is a hotel meant for the dead.

In Japan, crematoriums are few and far between and the municipalities face resistance from the residents when it comes to creating space for more crematoriums. In fact, gaining access to the existing crematoriums is not a cakewalk given the increasing number of natural deaths in the country. Therefore, in case a cemetery is overbooked, body of the departed ones can be stored in climate-controlled coffins till there is a place available in the cremation ground. The coffins are covered with see-through lids.

The rooms at this hotel are basic and clean, and outfitted with double beds, flat screen televisions and more furniture. The hotel fare is quite affordable for the middle-range rooms and a tad higher for the upgraded rooms.

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These mortuary-cum-inns, under the guise of hotels, have come as a blessing for a country like Japan. Here, a vast majority of population has been ageing fast, community ties are loosening and crematories are juggling with the increasing number of dead bodies lining up for cremation on their grounds. These factors have borne rich harvest for the owners of Hotel Relation; their business continues to grow with 70-80% of the room occupancy.