ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the relationship between the Japanese way of delivering hospice care and the Japanese attitude to death and dying. It looks at how people have perceived the matter of death and dying in history from classic to modern times. The chapter considers the relationship between the hospice and the attitude to death and dying. The historical analysis of the Japanese attitude to death and dying has shown that there are some important underlying attitudes which have remained throughout history. Individual responsibility for the disease as well as death and dying is prevented by this lack of disclosure and others makes a decision in regard to the matter of life and death on behalf of the patient. Moreover, Japanese people have difficulty in accepting their loved ones’ death, so it is hard to popularize hospice care as ‘a place for the dying’, in which the family has to accept that patients are going to die in the near future.
