Reuters is reporting on the latest camera phone trend in Japan. It seems that funeral attendees are now photographing the deceased one last time before the burial or cremation.
Japan’s obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased.
"I get the sense that people no longer respect the dead. It’s disturbing," a funeral director told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.
At one ceremony several people gathered round the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse as preparations were made to begin a cremation, she was quoted as saying.
"I’m sure the deceased would never want their faces photographed," she said.
But others called it a form of a memento in the modern age.
"Some can’t grasp ‘reality’ unless they take a photo and share it with others … It comes from a desire to keep a strong bond with the deceased," social commentator Toru Takeda told the paper.
Here, a woman is seen taking a photograph with her mobile phone in Tokyo in an undated file photo. Japan’s obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased.
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