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A traditional funeral in many cultures comprise three stages: the visitation, the funeral service and the committal service.
The visitation is when distant family and friends visit the close family to offer condolences and support. More importantly, it's a time to pay respects to the deceased.
The funeral itself is traditionally a religious service led by a priest or some other officiant.
The committal is also traditionally a religious service at a cemetery, which ends when the coffin is lowered into the ground. For a cremation, the committal may be the latter part of the funeral service when the coffin is moved away for cremation.
With respect to this final stage, this page looks at the most Rokuyo-appropriate day for having a funeral, and also which day to avoid.
Before we start, we're talking about good days for a funeral, not death itself. Rokuyo has no part to play in the timing of death. In special cases, death can be scheduled; for example when the life-support equipment or medication is withdrawn from a terminally ill patient, or for prisoner execution, murder or suicide. But Rokuyo is not known to be used for such scheduling.
For funerals, however, a ceremony on Butsumetsu may give the bereaved a little extra comfort. And if Butsumetsu is a 'good' day for a funeral, what is a 'bad' day?
Well, Tomobiki has been traditionally considered unsuitable. The English translation of Tomobiki is "pulling a friend", and the last thing wanted at a funeral is for the spirit of the deceased to pull their friend into the next world, at least not just yet.
In the past, crematoria staff were sure of a nice day off every Tomobiki due to lack of business. But times have changed. The rapid increase in the number of babies in Japan after the middle of the 20th century has meant a rapid increase in the number of deaths in the early 21st century.
There were twice as many deaths in 2022 than a decade earlier and the numbers are projected to rise further. (The peak in 2022 is attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic.)
Now might be a good time to buy stock in the funeral industry and companies who make refrigerators for storing corpses. But that's of little comfort to grieving relatives who have to wait too many days, or weeks, before they can say their final farewells at a dignified funeral.
One way to alleviate the wait is to opt for a funeral on Tomobiki.
For such funerals, folklore tells of a doll placed in the coffin so that it, and not a friend, is dragged to the next life.
That's 100% codswallop, of course. If a supernatural entity could be powerful enough to pull somebody into death, then it should also be able to differentiate between a doll and a human corpse.
This page's author has attended a Japanese funeral on a Tomobiki day and can confirm that the family didn't consider Rokuyo at all; neither did any particular bad luck follow the event. No doll was placed in the coffin and the funeral proceeded with decorum.
As with most deaths, no emotional capacity remained to consider superstitions.
One would assume there's no place for superstition when scheduling death.
However, Britain and her colonies retained the Murder Act of 1752 until capital punishment was abolished in the 20th century. This Act specified that execution couldn't take place on a Sunday.
The US has a similarly hypocritical custom of not scheduling executions between sundown Friday and sundown Sunday to avoid both the Jewish Shabbat and Christian Sabbath.