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The Cemetery Policy and Hygiene on Meiji Period : Through The Discourse about The Funeral method and Cemetery Hygiene

The purpose of this paper is to analyze an impact of hygiene discourses on the establishment of the cemetery policy in the cholera outbreak of the early Meiji era. Therefore, in this paper, I analyzed how discourses on the hygiene of the cemetery was formed at that time by reviewing “an introduction of hygiene(養生汎論)” published by hygiene experts, ‘Ernst Tiegel’ and “an institutional theory of hygiene(衛生制度論)” published by hygiene policymaker, ‘Gotou shinpei(後藤新平)’, and articles on newspapers and magazines. I also sought to clarify the effect of such discourses on “the regulation law of a cemetery and burial (墓地及埋葬取締規則)” in 1884. As a result of these analyzes, the following four points were confirmed. First, due to the epidemic of cholera, interment was limited and cremation was emerged as a more hygienic method for disposing dead body from cholera. Second, hygiene experts insisted that cremation is more hygienic than interment , and that when it is necessary to do interment , it is necessary to set regulations such as distance from the highly populated areas and soil quality. Third, hygiene experts have argued that even though the customs and religious customs which had been used to managed the cemetery until the pre-modern era are still remain in society, it is inevitable that the cemetery will be managed by the law from that time. Fourth, these discourses influenced the “the regulation law of a cemetery and burial (墓地及埋葬取締規則)” established in 1884, and for this reason, this “Cemetery Rules” contained clauses established indisputably targets for hygiene management, such as the distance between a cemetery and densely populated area, the depth of a grave. It was also confirmed that this “the regulation law of a cemetery and burial “ was enacted to deprive the religious character of the cemetery and to keep it under the control of local authorities and police.