Self made mummies

The last job you'll ever have. Mummifying yourself over a period of years.

The mummies have always been something of an open secret in Japan—while there is no attempt to hide their existence, very few people are aware of them. They were first studied scientifically in the 1960s when researchers from Tokyo's Waseda University investigated the centuries-old rumours of indigenous mummies. Upon finding the mummies actually existed, scholars expected to discover signs of post-mortem mummification of the corpses, carried out in a similar fashion to their famous Egyptian, Aztec and Inca counterparts: the first step in any traditional mummification process is always the removal of the internal organs, for these quickly decay and release toxins throughout the body, hastening decomposition. When tests on the sokushinbutsu showed that the internal organs were still present, the researchers realised that these monks had not been preserved by their peers post-mortem. Rather, they had practised ritual self-mummification while still alive.