Can Japan find space for Muslim burials? Not if right-wing rhetoric prevails
A viral video showing a Sanseito MP telling foreign residents to cremate their dead or ship them home spotlights discomfort with diversity
The video showed Mizuho Umemura, a House of Councillors member from the populist Sanseito party, objecting to the burial of Muslim residents during a parliamentary debate late last month.
She argued that cremation was a vital national custom practised by more than 99 per cent of Japanese people and said that approving new burial grounds for Muslims would be inappropriate given land constraints and concerns about groundwater contamination.
Responding to calls for Muslim residents’ burial options to be expanded, Umemura reportedly said that foreigners settling in Japan should be told that if they die “they can either be cremated or have their remains repatriated” at their own expense.