confusedThat, and bragging about the research I've done...
Visited: religioustolerance.org, shinto.org, http://www.litesofheaven.com/shinto.html Shinto shrines both modern and historical, Buddhist temples both modern and historical (had a couple days in Kyoto recently), Japanese guide to explain some things.
I have a character whose generation is American, whose parents' generation is Japanese. As I understand Shinto, there are few beliefs on the afterlife but that one of them holds that in order to have a peaceful afterlife one needs to basically have a peaceful death. To let a family member die alone or in pain is to let that family member go to a bad afterlife. (Unfortunately I've lost the link on that one.)
In my RPG one of the character's uncles defied his father/the NPC's grandfather and as a result ended up murdered, alone, by a third party. I want to describe the family shrines in such a way that hints at the angst this creates in the family, maybe show that there's something different about this uncle. I'm already fudging one detail--the shrines I saw in Kyoto did not include photographs of the deceased, and I was considering that.
