Being Dead Otherwise

Reviews / Votes

"This is an extraordinary book. . . . Startling stories of mortician contests, robot Buddhist priests, and clean-up crews dealing with the odor of death illustrate change and the crisis of care in a society where good health care has made very old age a common experience, yet family and community have not kept up to provide solatia and death care for the increasing population of those in need. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals." - M. White (Choice) "As an ethnography of death, these stories are as diverse as the humans they represent . . . Being Dead Otherwise is a highly recommended read not only for those who are interested in Japanese death rituals and concepts of the world beyond the living, but also for those who want to explore what it means when a society is faced with extreme ageing, dissolution of large family structures, urbanization, and potential anonymization." - Marius Palz (Folklore) "Allison's writing is both straightforward and vivid, making her story relatable to those readers not entirely familiar with contemporary Japan; there is also something endearingly warm about her voice, as she considers this book 'the most personal of all my scholarly endeavors' (p. xi)." - Shunsuke Nozawa (American Ethnologist) "For researchers who make developing the cross-cultural model of grief central to their scholarship Being Dead Otherwise should be one of the important books in their library."
- Dennis Klass (Omega) "The methods of the book are a lively combination of anthro-journalistic techniques for tracing out leads. . . . Not in the least technical, this book is easily accessible to anyone interested in how contemporary Japan is preparing - or not - for this part of its aging future." - Robert C. Marshall (Anthropology and Aging) "Allison stitches together a fascinating patchwork of scenes from various sites across Japan, revealing the potential of necro-animism to capture both practices of care and of control." - Jason Danely (Journal of Development Studies) "This book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students interested in necro versus biopolitics, relationality and affect, and care work." - Pamela Runestad (Journal of Asian Studies) "Being Dead Otherwise is a seminal ethnographic work on death, and a refreshing counter to the crisis narratives commonly used to describe modern Japan. . . . This is an important work on modern Japan but also for the studies of end-of-life and death more generally, presenting not only other ways of being dead but also other ways of living in anticipation of death." - Natasha Durie (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford) "The strength of the present work lies in Allison's nuanced fieldwork with bereaved families, those anticipating their own death, and representatives of the funeral industry. She has done a brilliant job of describing the fast-changing deathscape here in Japan." - Tom Gill (Journal of Japanese Studies)