Continuing Bonds in the Resolution of Grief in Japan and North America

Abstract

The article is a cross-cultural study of continuing bonds to the dead as an aspect of bereavement in Japan and North America. Japanese ancestor rituals, rooted in Buddhism, are well-developed cultural forms for managing continuing bonds. North American material is from a study of continuing bonds among bereaved parents in a self-help group. Cultural differences create very different ways of experiencing and managing the thoughts and emotions modern psychology calls grief. In both Japan and North America, the transformation of the relationship from living to a continuing bond is accomplished by embedding the attachment to the deceased in a network of social bonds. In both, bonds to the dead connect survivors to larger attachments, to religion, and to nation. The level of abstraction ranges from how relating to the dead functions in individual lives to how grief and continuing bonds are shaped by the culture's economic and political power arrangements.