Strolling through the forecourt of a dealership specializing in JDM imports, I was expecting to see the usual array of Skylines and plush vans. Naturally, this dealership delivered on that. What I wasn’t expecting was a genuine reikyusha based on a Toyota Land Cruiser.
What’s a reikyusha, you may ask? Well, initially I had no clue what was going on with this ornately decorated Land Cruiser but figured it had something to do with funerals. Bingo: a reikyusha is a Japanese hearse, although there are many hearses in Japan that feature the more conventional style of North American examples. Because of its positioning on the lot, I couldn’t snap many photos but this shot clearly shows how intricately detailed these are. Interestingly, almost all Japanese deceased are cremated. It is common for their ashes to be driven in one of these hearses to the cemetery, where they are then buried in a family plot. These reikyusha hearses are often based on luxury sedans so this Land Cruiser is a somewhat obscure example.
Ok, so maybe you don’t want to spend $12,000 on a fancy hearse. Well, there’s plenty else on the lot to tantalize North American Curbsiders, even if those of us in the Asia-Pacific region find this collection of gray imports unexciting due to their ubiquity. Here’s an R34 Skyline sedan and its platform-mate, the WC34 Stagea. Also, I’ve never gotten used to the name “Stagea”. It looks and sounds awful, much like Toyota’s Australian market name for the Highlander, “Kluger”. Blech.
And here’s the WC34’s successor, the M35-series Stagea. This is basically a wagon version of the Infiniti G35 (V35 Nissan Skyline) and something I very strongly considered buying.
Oof. Some people think wagons look like hearses but I think this is a beauty. With an available turbocharged 2.5 version of the Nissan VQ engine pumping out 280 hp and 300 ft-lbs, not to mention a spacious load bay, I’d be happy for my mortal remains to be carried in style and pace in one of these Stageas. Actually, I think I’d prefer my living body in one of these!
The reikyusha looks bizarre, half-modern & half-Japanese Baroque, even compared to overdone Victorian aesthetics (thinking of Lincoln’s funeral). Far afield of Japanese interior & garden design.
Wiki shows other examples. That Lincoln TC looks awful; with that, I’m dying☺ to get the stretched Crown instead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearse#Japan
Makes me wish I lived in a community with a sizable Japanese population.
I’d love to have the last laugh, imagining the looks on my loved ones’ faces as they wondered why I specified a reikyusha for my own funeral!
It looks like Hilo, HI & Gardena, CA are your best bets for Japanese-American neighbors.
I remember when Japanese gardeners were all the rage in So. Cal., but I think Mexicans took over that gig since then.
Gardening was the only work a lot of them could get in Southern California after the war. People thought the Japanese had a great love of gardening or something, but many said they hated the work. Anyway, the “Japanese Gardeners” have pretty much retired or died out.
That’s interesting as I spend a fair good bit of time in Gardena , Ca. and the Japanese owned homes almost always have incredible landscaping .
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Sadly , most of the remaining Japanese Nurseries are being closed down and changed to apartment complexes .
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-Nate
Nate, I think you missed the point. You’re never going to see a house owned by Japanese with anything but a perfect garden. That doesn’t mean they’re doing it themselves, though.
His point was that the Japanese didn’t want to be constrained to gardening professionally, but wanted to be able to pursue the professions of their choice. Which explains why there’s no more Japanese (professional) gardeners: they’ve all moved up the food chain to better-paying professions. Which is why they can afford such nice houses, beautiful gardens, and professional gardeners! 🙂
Here’s an L.A. Times article with a concise history of the Japanese Gardener in California.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/25/local/la-me-adv-japanese-gardeners-2-20120926
Wow high prices on what are very common cheap cars here, but I guess Australia still has tariffs on imported used cars, NZ doesnt but unfortunately or not those old bangers from the 90s can no longer be imported safety regulations have been enacted and those older Jappas can no longer come in.
I haven’t looked at it for years, but I think the workshops that do the compliancing work to bring the cars up to ADR specs have to be licensed which seems to be a noticeable restriction, and the numbers of cars imported seems to be a lot lower than say 15 years ago.
If I remember correctly, the ‘Highlander’ was called Kluger or Kluger V in the Japan market as well.
THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE, KLUGER!
Nope it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
That Stagea wagon looks like a Volvo…pretty snazzy!
I saw a Stagea recently, it looked like one of the ultimate turbo-awd types – there were a lot of much more pedestrian types built – and pretty nice.
The name is pretty awkward; at least Kluger is an actual word/name. Highlander was already taken in Australia as a trim level on Hyundai SUVs.
I saw one a few years back that had obviously been put to good use. Admittedly we’d had a run of bad weather, but I couldn’t help thinking the driver had enjoyed it.
They sure do look like a Volvo; They even made a higher riding XC Cross Country clone model called the AR-X:
How does one even pronounce Stagea? Is it “STAY-juh”? “stuh-JEE-uh”? “STAG-ee-uh”? “STAH-jyuh”?
Star-jee-uh is how it’s pronounced in New Zealand. But pronounciation varies on the old JDM TV ads for it – some say Stage-uh, some Stay-jee-uh. I guess that’s the fun part of an invented word!
It is always amazing to me that Nissan had these remarkable cars available elsewhere and in the US they brought us one ugly, boring car after another. There were and are a few exceptions like the 2nd gen 300z Turbo and the GTR, but on the whole Nissan completely squandered what was once a reputation as a Japanese performance brand. Now they sell second-rate Camcords and CUV’s
Come again, which ones were remarkable cars?
I am comparing the Stagea with the US Altima, for instance. I realize that the Stagea was not a performance car per se, but it was rear wheel drive and cleanly styled. The Altima of that same era had no performance ‘genes’ of any kind.
But the Stagea was, as stated in the article, basically a Skyline wagon. We did get the R35 Skyline, as the Infiniti G35.
We did miss the Skylines up to the R34. I’m assuming that they would have been unwelcome competition for the Maxima (which was neither ugly nor boring from the mid 80’s forward). Though once Infiniti got off the ground, it might have been nice for them to have offered a version of the R33 or R34 Skyline as part of their lineup, much like Lexus has offered the RWD GS alongside the similarly sized but FWD Camry-based ES.
There was one, just one very rapid model of Skyline from Nissan it had a twin turbo six and four wheel drive and managed to get touring car racing rules rewritten to exclude it worldwide there were only a handfull made and they were horrendously expensive to the point you could not buy one, the Skylines you see on the street and in the fast and fatuous movies are all faked the real thing is not a performance car with great handling just a six cylinder family car with a two door option.
Diapet made a die-cast version of a Japanese Lincoln hearse. It wouldn’t be good form to offer this as a present to your kids or to your friends, though.
Oh man, I know someone who needs one of these.
Well I’ve seen a few of these on our Kiwi roads, but never based on a Land Cruiser! Perhaps they’re used for those hard-to-reach mountain cemeteries…! The ones I’ve seen have all been based on the mid-1980s Lincoln Town Car. The most recent one I spotted was sold by a local yard, the new owner promptly removed the add-on wooden parts and turned it into a TC ute.
Plenty of Stagea (Stagii?, Stageioux??) here; my aunt and uncle have had an M35 for nearly 10 years now. Looks great, goes great.
The hearse is wild! I have actually seen something like that before at the Houston funeral museum. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend it. It has a couple of dozen hearses on display, all very high quality examples from horse drawn to the 50’s, and a few newer ones. They also occasionally host “professional” car shows, which means hearses, flower cars and classic car-based ambulances.
Nice find – with over 30 years in Japan I’ve not seen one of these based off a Land Crusier (or any truck) – maybe Tom Kreutzer has. All I’ve seen used either Lincoln Town Car or Cadillac Deville chassis, or if JDM based, a Toyota Crown.
Could come from Northern Japan famous for some harsh winters.
Absolutely wild, and the fact that it’s Land Cruiser based makes it all the more so. I’ll bet the FJ diehards would get a kick out of it!
Also, I do like the looks of that Stagea wagon–from the back. It looks like a sleeker version of the Volvo V70. Not bad from the front, but not as pretty as the Skyline/G35 on which it’s based. Sometime I need to drop by our local version of this–due to US rules we can’t import cars until they turn 25 years old, but we’ve got a local importer who specializes in JDM imports and often has many fun-looking things in their inventory. Not a small number of RHD Skylines running around Richmond that have come through their inventory, plus some more unusual things (I’ve personally laid eyes on a ’91 Nissan Homy van recently, and photographed an ’88 Cefiro last year.)