AKIRA OKOMOTO sat up and climbed out of a coffin.

    “It was very relaxing,” he proclaimed, as his 27-year-old daughter, Miwa, then trepidatiously took her turn lying down for five minutes in the dark enclosure that would one day be her final resting place.

    The scene is a cafe in eastern Tokyo, where a handful of people have gathered to hear a talk by a death expert and try out the cafe’s “coffin experience,” which owner Masumi Murata says helps people “cherish each and every day and realize what’s really important” by pondering their own deaths.

    Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in 2011 killed more than 15,000 people. The ground below the 36 million residents of the Tokyo area rumbles spasmodically with minor earthquakes in an ever-present threat. Combined with these continual reminders, Japan has one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world where more and more people, old and young, are living alone. Millions of Japanese saw the hit film Departures, about the respectability of an undertaker’s profession, which won the 2009 Academy Award for foreign film.

    All this has made talk of death commonplace in Japan — and prompted a number of companies, including Aeon Co., Japan’s largest retailer operating supermarkets and malls, and Yahoo Japan Corp. to enter the industry catering to it, known as shukatsu.

    “The old Japanese saying is, ‘A bird does not mess up the nest when it goes,’ and people were traditionally taken care of by family members when they died,” said Akio Doteuchi, a researcher at NLI Research Institute.

    “Now, not only the elderly but also the middle-aged and even younger people are worried about living alone and being socially isolated. The earthquake and tsunami in 2011 helped people realize that again,” he said.

    A three-day industry expo in early December, the first of its sort, drew 220 companies exhibiting their businesses related to death to more than 22,000 visitors, according to Mayumi Tominaga, an expo spokeswoman. Products included grave stones, hearses and balloons to carry ashes to the sky, while professional encoffiners held a competition for their skill in changing dead people’s clothes.

    “The range of shukatsu services is expected to further expand as people seek various options to handle their deaths,” said Takuji Mitsuda, chief management consultant at consultancy Funai Soken Inc., who puts the size of the industry at about 2 trillion yen (US$16.5 billion).

    “The Departures film gave Japanese a chance to ponder death. The Tohoku earthquake killed people’s loved ones and made them feel that their lives aren’t certain either. People started doing shukatsu to cherish their ‘now’ more and more, because of those events that made them aware of death.”

    Data from market research firm Yano Research, which was provided by Aeon, show the industry has grown 7 percent from 1.83 trillion yen in 2011.

    Yahoo Japan last year started Yahoo Ending, which lets users set up a free electronic memorial for themselves after death, handles their online data, documents and photos according to their wishes and sends final emails stored in Yahoo’s servers to family and friends after death.

    Yahoo doesn’t disclose subscriber numbers other than that they’re in the thousands, mostly people in their 30s and 40s paying 180 yen a month to keep their final emails stored, and it hopes to raise it to tens of thousands soon, said Shinsuke Takahashi, who leads the project. (SD-Agencies)