An altar decorated with white and green foreign flowers in the Hibiya-Kadan booth attracts attention of participants at a trade show in Yokohama on Tuesday, June 18.
Flower shops and producers suggested new flower displays in line with changing funeral styles in a funeral business fair held in Pacifico Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Monday, June 17, and Tuesday, June 18.
Participants at the fair held by Sogo Unicom, publisher of Monthly Funeral Business, said funeral displays are diversifyi
ng, as more people are choosing new forms of send-offs for the deceased, such as holding private funerals or skipping funeral services.
Besides traditional funeral flower arrangements using chrysanthemums, many exhibition booths showed altar displays and sympathy flower arrangements using foreign flowers such as roses and orchids. “Flower imports are increasing along with the rising demand for foreign flowers used in funerals,” said an official of Classic, a cut flower importer.
Hibiya-Kadan Floral Co., a florist chain, displayed in its booth an altar designed for non-religious funerals, using mainly foreign flowers. “In regions where relationships with relatives or ties among communities are not so intimate, people tend to choose their own ways of sending off their loved ones, unbound from traditions,” said Michiyasu Ando, head of the company’s life support services department.
D-Market, which sells cut flowers grown at home and abroad, offered annual contract plans for funeral homes to purchase flowers. OASIS Corporation, an orchid dealer and producer, introduced a system to revitalize funeral flowers, in which the company keeps potted orchids displayed in funeral receptions and returns them in bloom a year later to the family of a person who died.
(June 19, 2013)