Well, this is a depressing subject…

Yesterday, the newspaper, Japan News, via Imperial Household Agency announced the “…revised funeral plans [for] the bodies of the Emperor and Empress [which] will be cremated once they die, a historic change from the Imperial tradition of underground burial that has lasted for about 350 years since the early Edo period…” 

Please click here to read the Japan News article in its entirety.  Or, you can read another article here from the Japan Times.