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four Embodying Hybridity the necrogeography of pet memorial spaces M s. N., who is middle-aged and unmarried, lives in Tokyo. In 2006, when her parents passed away in short succession, they were interred at a Buddhist temple. Her father’s cremains filled the last space in the family grave. Ms. N. began to ponder her options for her own future interment. Eventually, the family would have to have the ancestral cremains removed from their urns and “returned to the soil” (tsuchi ni kaesu) to open up more space, but rather than considering a traditional burial, Ms. N. began to search for a new grave site though this would mean being separated from her mother. Ms. N. decided to be interred with her two shih tzus, to whom she had grown very attached while she cared for her aging and increasingly infirm mother. They were, she insisted, not her pets but her children (uchi no ko). Sharing a grave with her dogs would mean that she would not be separated from them after her death, and likewise her dogs would not feel abandoned after they died. In her search for a cemetery that would accept her with her dogs, she found Azusawa Boen, an urban cemetery in Itabashi Ward, northern Tokyo. She was attracted to the cemetery not only because it offered jointspecies interment but also because of its bright, cheerful atmosphere and the relatively reasonable cost of a plot. After purchasing a plot, she had the headstone engraved with a rose pattern and an inscription that reads, “Madoi” (Intimate gathering). The base bears the names of her small family—hers on the right and the dogs’ names on the left under two small paw prints. Her human family has not been supportive of her decision. Ms. N.’s brother criticized her for being excessively attached to her shih tzus: “If you are that attached to your dogs, you will turn into a dog in your next Embodying Hybridity | 125 life.” Ms. N. brushed this off as a country superstition caused by the influence of her sister-in-law, who is from a rural area in Nagano Prefecture, where—according to Ms. N.—people still believe in the existence of fox possession and the Buddhist concept of the realm of beasts. In her quest never to be separated from her dogs, Ms. N. has been willing to contest the boundaries between the human and nonhuman animals and between blood relations and canine companions. According to cultural geographer Chris Philo, animal geography can benefit from investigating how animals are represented in religion and cosmology in order to understand how humans have constructed animals “as one thing rather than another . . . and then subjected [them] to related socio-spatial practices of inclusion or exclusion.”1 Conversely, to rephrase Philo, we can also study sociospatial practices of inclusion and exclusion to understand how humans construct animals as one thing rather than another . Cemeteriespowerfullyillustratepracticesofinclusionandexclusion. According to Michel Foucault, cemeteries are heterotopias, “real places . . . which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites . . . are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”2 Cemeteries often mirror social practices and boundaries among the living, such as ethnic, racial, or economic segregation.3 Racial segregation has applied not just to the deceased but also to the clients: an early pet cemetery in Washington, DC was segregated into areas for pets of white people and those for pets of African-Americans.4 In Japan, until relatively recently some Buddhist temples made apparent their discriminatory practices against outcasts on tombstones and in necrologies of posthumous names.5 Spatial concepts are particularly important in the East Asian context with its ubiquitous geomantic ideas, which also infuse funeral practices: the placement of the body, cremains, accoutrements, and offerings ensure the repose of the dead and the prosperity of the living . Boundaries in the necral landscape tend to be observed even more strictly when it comes to pets, which are usually buried in spaces distinct from human mortuary spaces. This is also true in Japan. For example, in a study on how to establish a pet cemetery at a Buddhist temple, Yamamoto Kazuhiko points out that when establishing a place for pet funerals and memorial rites “the most crucial problem is in which location they should be performed. If they are performed in the same space as those for humans (which is quite common), one has to consider how these spaces [18.221.85.33] Project MUSE (2024...

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