When Death Falls Apart

“Engagingly written and analytically nuanced, When Death Falls Apart questions what happens to people and objects when the material traditions surrounding death and remembrance of the deceased confront the changing values of the living. Based on an impressive commitment to extensive and intensive fieldwork, including within her own family, Gould traces the life cycle of traditional wooden Japanese Buddhist memorial altars (butsudan) from production in traditional workshops and modern factories, to sale on shop floors, to transportation and installation in households, to display by families, and, finally, to abandonment, disposal, and partial replacement by new ritual practices. In the process, she illuminates how culture, corporations, and capitalism have engaged with and changed the significance of death and dying in Japan today.” * F. Hilary Conroy First Book Prize Committee for 2025 * “From graves for abandoned gravestones to the craft and care by which workers tend to butsudan still today, this book is an electrifying read. Ethnographically intimate, analytically astute, and refreshingly clear, When Death Falls Apart brilliantly tracks both the challenges and attachments to necro-care as once practiced and getting recrafted today.” * Anne Allison, author of Being Dead Otherwise * “When Death Falls Apart is well-crafted and thoughtful, and it significantly advances scholarship on death studies. At the same time, Gould’s excellent study is a model for rich anthropological description of particular people, places, and objects that challenge the reader to think about other places, other deaths, and other bodies.” * S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, author of A History of Religion in 5½ Objects *