Ep. 367 Increasing Death Awareness in Japan with Masatoshi Shoji

End-of-Life University

Learn how this man’s experience with grief led him to start a Death Café in Japan and become a death doula and Willow EOL educator.

My guest Masatoshi Shoji is a licensed acupuncturist, health communicator and medical translator in Sendai Japan. He started Death Café Sendai in his hometown in 2015 and since then has trained as a certified grief counselor, death doula and Willow EOL Educator. He shares why he first became interested in working with grief and death and his experiences with Death Café in Japan.

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This episode includes:

• Masatoshi’s experience with grief as a young widower in Japan
• What inspired him to create Death Café Sendai
• How he organized and promoted his first Death Café
• Resources that Masatoshi is using to further his own death education
• The gradual growth in popularity of Death Café in Japan
• The obstacles to talking about death in his community, including the use of implicit language
• How Masatoshi felt socially marginalized as a young widower in his community
• His goal to bring acupuncture to hospice and end-of-life care

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Death & Dying Class Instructor Training
• Widowed and Young (WAY) group in UK
• Movie: Departures
• Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation Education Series
• DeathCafe.com

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