As rest and peace seem like increasingly scarce commodities in modern life, a meditation space in Tokyo is renting out “cute coffins” for customers who wish to forget their worldly cares.

The Meiso Kukan Kanoke-in charges customers to lie in a coffin for half an hour as a somewhat macabre form of relaxation.

Customers have a choice of an open or closed casket, made by Grave Tokyo, a specialist company known for creating customised coffins and funeral products. They can listen to “healing” music, watch a video projected on the ceiling, meditate or just sleep. The fee starts at 2,000 yen (£9.50) for 30 minutes without a reservation.

A person lying in a pink coffin surrounded by pink flowers.

Grave Tokyo says customers emerge feeling refreshed

A young woman dressed in a school uniform, lying in a pink coffin filled with flowers, against a blue patterned rug.

The business said this form of reflection was recommended for people who wanted to calm their nerves and spend time alone. Intended to make death feel a little less forbidding, these coffin experiences have been held in funeral homes and even shopping centres.

Grave Tokyo claims that customers emerge from their coffins feeling refreshed and more eager to cherish their lives.

The brainchild of the designer Mikako Fuse, the business produces funerary urns and designer caskets with a range of motifs including flowers, cartoonish skulls, musical instruments and the stars and stripes of the American flag.

Mikako Fuse lying in a pink coffin.

Mikako Fuse and some of her designs

A brightly colored coffin with a floral pattern, in a room with a blue sofa and patterned wallpaper.

Beauty in death was a celebrated aesthetic in samurai times and prewar Japan, but the decorated coffins are in line with the longstanding kawaii (cute) trend of recent decades. Influenced by manga and anime, cute characters have been used for everything from selling toys, food and medicine to recruitment drives for the Japanese military.

Grave Tokyo, however, says it wants to present a new approach to mourning from the perspective of fashion and art. It also wants to reduce suicides among young people in Japan, which have hit record highs.

“I have seen many people who have participated in Grave Tokyo’s coffin experience that have reduced or alleviated their thoughts of death,” Fuse, who describes herself as a survivor, said in a press release. “Before choosing a death that cannot be reversed, I want them to experience a death that can be reversed.”