Having hosted four funerals for parents and in-laws, Yoshiyuki Dempo got the idea to take sougi, the Japanese word for funeral, and put an E in front of it. Last summer he launched a Web site, www.esougi.net, to help mourners deal with the logistics of funerals. Here’s how it works: Dempo’s company, Polytech Co. of Shizuoka in central Japan, provides software to funeral parlors, which set up a Web site for each funeral. Mourners use the site to find directions to the ceremony and make travel plans without having to bother the grieving family. To jog the memory, a photo and biography of the deceased are also available on the site. Those unable to attend can sign the online guest book and, with a few clicks of the mouse, send a condolence message and flowers.
For the deceased’s family, the Web site helps them keep track of attendees and the gifts they bring. At the ceremony, mourners sign a liquid-crystal-display panel, which enters their names into a database. Later, the family receives a list of attendees on CD-ROM. This helps in complying with Japanese etiquette, which calls for thank-you notes to be sent within 49 days of the event.
The service seems to be catching on slowly. Two major funeral-parlor chains offer eSougi, and more than 80 eSougi funerals have taken place in since last summer’s debut. Yoshihiro Amitani found the service helpful when he was put in charge of arranging the funeral of his company’s former chairman. Attendees seemed to accept the unusual system. “Nobody said it was inappropriate,” he says. He noted, however, that most of those who signed the virtual guest book were engineers who would have been comfortable with computers and the Internet. Elders tended to avoid it.
