Mika Iwasaki, and Tatsu Hirukawa flew over from Japan to present their research on 18 new Japanese Near Death Experience (NDE) at the 2013 SPR Annual Conference. Their intention is to try to reinvigorate this type of research, which has lapsed in Japan.
I don’t really know very much about the Japanese NDE, but the 18 NDE’s which they presented, appeared to me to be pretty indistinguishable from western NDE’s, contrary to what I had been expecting. They featured the bright light and tunnel etc. (communication was quite difficult with the team, so I can’t be absolutely definite). I was expecting to hear descriptions of recalled imagery which included ‘caves’ (as opposed to a tunnel), demonstrating the different cultural imagery between the Japanese and the classic western NDE.
Mika and Tatsu kindly provided us all with a hand-out containing a summary of the main points of their presentation. You can download a PDF scan of it I made here: NDE_18_cases_from_japan.pdf
Thinking Deeper 