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The story
On a radio broadcast on the 11th, Hiroyuki Ariyoshi spoke about his family’s grave in Kumano, Aki District, Hiroshima. With both parents now deceased, he revealed he no longer has a “family home” to speak of, and admitted that without knowing much about the location of the grave his mother built before she died, he grumbled, “I’m not going to visit a grave somewhere I don’t know.” Since his younger brothers live in central Hiroshima City, he said opportunities to visit his hometown have themselves become rare. On 5ch, opinions split between those questioning his responsibility as the eldest son and those arguing it’s unreasonable to suddenly demand ties to a family home he’d grown distant from — the discussion also expanded into the burden of relocating and maintaining graves, and alternative memorial options like scattering ashes at sea.
Hiroyuki Ariyoshi Furious Over the Location of the Family Grave His Mother Built: “I Won’t Visit a Grave Somewhere I Don’t Know”
Comedian and TV personality Hiroyuki Ariyoshi (52) appeared on the JFN radio show he hosts, “Hiroyuki Ariyoshi’s SUNDAY NIGHT DREAMER” (Sundays at 8 PM), which aired on the 11th, and spoke about his family’s grave.
Ariyoshi, who is from Kumano, Aki District, Hiroshima, revealed that with both of his parents now deceased, “I don’t really have a family home anymore. My younger brothers also live elsewhere in the city center now, so I’ve stopped going back to my hometown.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
It wasn't you who kept the family home going, it was your mom.
If it were me, I'd visit the grave even if it were in Siberia.
Once a year is already rough.
the grave is at a temple in Ota Ward.
His younger brother's still there, so he's probably stuck handling the relatives and all that, meaning Ariyoshi doesn't really have any say. It's not unusual for the chief mourner duty to fall to the nearby second son instead of the distant eldest son either.
If that's the case, it's even worse for him to look down on them and say 'just move it!'
now that it's mostly old folks left, they discontinued the grave visits altogether.
Plenty of Tokyo families have their ancestral graves all the way out in Kyoto.
That'd be different if he'd paid for it and built it in Hiroshima himself to manage.
Ariyoshi's being lame about this.
I think that's exactly the kind of situation this is, though…
There's no such thing.
Are you channeling Kazuko Hosoki?" (a famous TV fortune-teller/moralist known for preaching ancestor worship)
That's what I thought too.
Though there might be other reasons we don't know about.
I think that's exactly right (´・ω・｀)
Building a grave is the same as building a house —
so if they'd actually talked regularly, he definitely would've been consulted.
It might be the parents' ancestral home, but to you it can still feel like somewhere distant.
Of course he'd pay for it.
He's just saying Takahiro should handle it since he lives in Hiroshima.
especially on my mother's side.
Don't go airing family issues on the radio of all places —
especially when your mother isn't around to argue back.
and demanding the grave get moved to Tokyo instead.
Exactly.
Just like Ariyoshi has no attachment to wherever his mother chose for the grave,
his own kids probably won't have any attachment to wherever his family home used to be either.
His brothers are still around Hiroshima though, aren't they.
The grave my late parents built is the Goto family grave.
The aunt who's close with the Goto family is actually from the Sendo family.
My father is a Goto, and my mother married into the Goto family from the Sendo family.
That aunt — who got divorced and went back to the Sendo name — is my late mother's older sister.
That aunt, my mother's sister, wants to be buried in the Goto family grave. Is that normal?
Shouldn't the Sendo aunt be buried in the Sendo family grave with my late grandfather, or arrange something of her own?
Am I right that if she were actually blood-related to the Goto family rather than the Sendo family, sharing the grave would make sense?
Setting the technicalities aside, I'm the one who's eventually going into the grave my parents are in,
and I really don't want my aunt in my grave.
Thinking about it that way, I'm planning to fight this with everything I've got.
ihai memorial tablets, sotoba grave markers, mizu-toba water tablets, and so on.
And plenty of the monks running all that are rule-breaking types who eat meat and drink on the sly.
Well, I guess that's kind of baked into the religion to begin with.
There was a TV segment on this before — the idea being you don't have to visit one specific spot since the sea is all connected,
so you just put your hands together facing the ocean whenever you want to remember them.
Though I guess that logic changes a bit if you're in a landlocked prefecture.
I can't swim, so I'd hate being scattered at sea lol
Background and Key Points of This Topic
In Japan, the custom of the eldest son inheriting the “family grave” remains strong, even as population movement and the rise of nuclear families leave more and more households growing distant from their family home and hometown. Ariyoshi’s comments were taken as a typical example of this trend. The thread split between those who felt it was unreasonable to expect grave visits and upkeep from someone who’d had little connection to the family home while his parents were alive, and those who felt neglecting what his mother left behind was simply cold-hearted. There was also notable discomfort with being saddled with grave management for no reason beyond being the “eldest son,” along with support for alternatives to having a grave at all, such as scattering ashes. Worth noting: the reporting doesn’t touch on when the mother passed away or the circumstances behind building the grave, so the thread’s speculation remains just that — speculation.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Hiroyuki Ariyoshi Furious Over the Location of the Family Grave His Mother Built, “I Won’t Visit a Grave Somewhere I Don’t Know”.”
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