In 2018, the number of unrelated remains in 20 ordinance-designated cities in Japan The number of pillars was 8,287.

I was born and raised in Osaka, but my legal domicile was in Saga Prefecture until I came of age and moved to Tokyo.

It seems that his paternal ancestors were born in Saga Prefecture.

The grave my grandfather built is in Saga Prefecture. My father is 86 years old, the third of four children. He has two older brothers and a younger sister. I have one brother and eight grandchildren in total. However, for various reasons, my brother asked me for advice on “graveside service” (dismantling and removing the graves, clearing the land, and returning the right to use the graves to the cemetery administrator). This is because my father’s siblings are aging and it is becoming difficult for them to maintain the graves. To begin with, even the grandchildren’s level had never visited the cemetery in Saga Prefecture and did not even know it existed.

My brother immediately went to Saga to get an estimate of the removal costs, which, when combined with past maintenance costs (weeding, memorial services, etc.), amounted to quite a large sum.

In other words, the maintenance costs of the tomb were incurred without their knowledge. My brother had to pay them off in my father’s generation, but he was too old to do so, so he spent a lot of time and effort to pay them off. He did this because he did not want to leave the grave maintenance costs to future generations.

This is not just a matter of cost burdens, nor is it due to a lack of faith in our grandchildren’s generation.

This is because it is practically impossible to visit a grave in an unknown place to honor one’s ancestors.

So I wondered if there was a way to honor our ancestors in the 21st century. I was talking with my ally, Teruhiro Kobayashi, and we came up with a great idea, which I would like to implement on a non-profit organization basis.

I will let you all know about this idea in a while.