Robert Hoey, a Canadian funeral director, relocated to Japan in 1993 and became one of the few English-speaking funeral professionals in the country. He founded Funeral Support Services, which specialises in bilingual funeral services and repatriation.

I became interested in the funeral business as a high school student in Canada. One of my friends was working at a funeral home on weekends and he would tell me about what he saw, and it encouraged me to see what it was all about. I was struck by the compassion and professionalism of the staff at the local funeral home and from there I knew that this business was where I belonged.

I went to the Funeral Service Education Program at Humber College in Toronto and after becoming a licensed funeral director/embalmer I moved home to Ottawa.

After working at the funeral home in Ottawa for five years I came across an advertisement for a Japanese company looking for embalmers. This company was trying to introduce embalming into the Japanese market. Up until then, usually dry ice was used to preserve the deceased.

I worked for a Japanese company for 24 years when I decided to take the leap and open my own company, Funeral Support Services Company Ltd, to provide trade embalming to the local funeral homes.

As I am a native English speaker, repatriations for foreign people who died in Japan came to me naturally. Now Funeral Support Services not only provides embalming, but repatriations, cremation, funeral ceremonies and estate consulting for the foreign community in Japan.

We are also the distributor for the Genelyn embalming chemicals produced in Canada to other embalming companies throughout Japan.

I struggled to learn Japanese and I am still learning to this day. Developing my own company in this very traditional business in Japan has been a huge challenge; however, I am extremely proud of what my team and I have been able to accomplish. We can provide assistance to families from all over the world when a death occurs in Japan. Families not only face a language barrier, but culture and legal challenges as well. We are here to ease that process.

For anyone who wants to reach out to me, I can be found on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X (formally known as Twitter) by searching Funeral Support Services Company Ltd in Japan.