ABSTRACT
The modern hospice began with a concern about cancer patients’ pain during the dying process both in the West and Japan. There are many differences between the Western and the Japanese hospice movements, but the most crucial of all may be the fact that Japanese patients are not like ‘pilgrims’ but ‘babies’, and that Western cancer patients may be in the process of infantilization but can never be likened to ‘babies’. As the term ‘hospice’ has a strong Christian tradition in the West, Seirei hospital, which established the first hospice ward in Japan is, in fact, a Christian hospital, and about half of the government-acknowledged palliative care units belong to Christian hospitals. Japanese hospice care tends to develop inside hospitals due to financial difficulties in establishing buildings independently from hospitals, and this makes it difficult for the Japanese to have the image of the hospice as ‘a house for pilgrims’.
