Source & Credit: The Sunday Times APRIL 10, 2011

GRAVE TOURS

BUKIT BROWN CEMETERY (LORNIE ROAD)

Bukit Brown holds the remains of many Singapore pioneers including Chew Boon Lay, Lim Chong Pang and Lim Nee Soon as well as Tan Kim CHing, eldest son of Tan Tock Seng.

It also includes what may be the oldest grave in Singapore - the final resting place of a certain Fang Shan who died in 1833.

CHUA CHU KANG CHINESE CEMETRY

Many graves here are built in the shape of animals such as fish or snakes, in accordance with feng shui principles.

In the night, it also attracts many mediums and their followers, who conduct regular seances there.

JAPANESE CEMETRY PARK (CHUAN HOE AVENUE)

The land was donated by brothel owner Tagajiro Fukaki in the 19th century as a burial ground for Japanese prostitutes and is now maintained by the Japanese Association of Singapore. No one has been buried there since 1973.

Famous names interred there include field marshal Count Terauchi Hisaichi supreme commander of Japanese forces in South-east Asia during WWII.

The graves of the Japanese prostitutes, their children and their mama-sans range from simple grave markers to elaborate tombstones.

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Buried: A life (The Sunday Times, Apr 10, 2011) profiles how guided cemetery walks in Singapore have become an unusual but rich form of public history, using gravestones, inscriptions, symbolism, and family stories to reconstruct the lives of early residents and the city’s changing social landscape.

What the tours are and why they matter

- The article describes two brothers who run day and night cemetery tours (also taking school groups), arguing that graveyards are “alive” with meaning—especially around Qing Ming, when families visit to clean graves and leave offerings.

- Their work is presented as heritage interpretation in the field: tours go beyond ghost stories and instead show how cemeteries function as open-air archives of migration, wealth, occupation, clan networks, beliefs, and community status.

- The brothers are portrayed as licensed guides who also do research—using newspapers and National Archives material—to match names on tombs to biographies and historical events.

What visitors learn (historical insights)

The tours use specific graves and burial landscapes to illuminate broader themes:

1) Singapore’s pioneers and place-names

- At Bukit Brown Cemetery, the guides highlight graves linked to well-known early Chinese businessmen and community figures, connecting tombs to the growth of commerce and to Singapore place-names that still exist today.

2) Social status, identity, and symbolism in tomb design

- The article emphasizes how tomb size, ornamentation, inscriptions, and guardian figures signal status and family resources.

- Examples include large, elaborate compounds with statues and attendants/guards, presented as material evidence of wealth and hierarchy in 19th–early 20th century Singapore.

3) Folk practice and “everyday” religion

- Visitors see contemporary practice layered over history: offerings (food, sweets, incense) left during grave visits, and explanations of why people do it.

- The tours also point out cemetery features shaped by fengshui beliefs, including graves built in animal forms (noted in the article’s “grave tours” sidebar).

4) Forgotten labor and caretaking economies

- The article notes the role of people who historically maintained graves and handled offerings—an often-overlooked part of how cemeteries operated as social spaces.

5) Urban change and erasure

- A recurring point is that old burial grounds are crumbling, overgrown, or relocated as Singapore develops, making documentation and interpretation time-sensitive.

- Cemeteries are framed as “hidden gems” whose stories risk disappearing unless they are recorded and explained.

Key sites highlighted

The piece and its sidebar spotlight several cemeteries as distinct “chapters” of Singapore history:

- Bukit Brown Cemetery: a major repository of pioneer history; the sidebar notes prominent burials and frames it as a place where many “founding-era” narratives converge.

- Chua Chu Kang Chinese Cemetery: cited for graves shaped like animals and aligned with fengshui principles.

- Japanese Cemetery Park (Chuan Hoe Avenue): presented as reflecting a different community history (including civilians and those tied to Japan’s presence in Singapore).

Overall takeaway

The article’s central claim is that cemetery tours, when run as researched heritage walks, offer a ground-level way to study Singapore’s past: not through monuments and textbooks, but through names, symbols, and burial landscapes that reveal how pioneers lived, what they valued, how communities organized themselves, and how modern development is steadily reshaping what remains.

Recent Photos of taken at the Japanese cemetery at Chuan Hoe Avenue

Contrary to popular belief; many cemeteries are/we’re on ausiplots of land. Even the Japanese knows this!

It becomes inauspicious when : if the land was seized for redevelopment and bones were not fully recovered or removed.

Sorry there are 20 photos.. so may take time to load up. Apologies!

Guided cemetery walks in Singapore are presented as a serious form of public history that turns burial grounds into “open-air archives” of the nation’s social, cultural, and urban development. Led by trained guides—often using archival sources, newspapers, and on-site interpretation—these tours move beyond superstition to show how grave inscriptions, symbols, tomb architecture, language, and location reveal information about migration patterns, clan and community networks, occupations, wealth, and belief systems (including fengshui and ritual practice).

The article highlights how participants learn Singapore’s past through specific sites such as Bukit Brown and other cemeteries, using notable burials to connect personal biographies to wider themes like early commerce, community leadership, and the formation of local place-names. It also underscores that cemeteries are living cultural spaces, especially during periods like Qing Ming, when ongoing practices of remembrance visibly layer the present onto the past.

A key thread is urgency: many historic burial grounds face neglect, decay, or redevelopment, making guided walks a time-sensitive way to document, interpret, and build public appreciation for heritage that is often overlooked—while prompting reflection on what is lost when historic landscapes are cleared or relocated.

Otokichi (alias John M. Ottoson)

Otokichi (alias John M. Ottoson) was born in Onoura village at Chita District of Owari (now Mihama Town of Aichi Prefecture). In 1832, he was a sailor on board the ship “Hojun-maru” which set sail from Ise Bay to Tokyo. The ship drifted out of sea at Toba in a storm. Otokichi managed to survive the disaster and was washed ashore at Cape Alava on the West Coast of America after one year and two months.

Being tossed back and forth in the flow of history he eventually travelled around the world but the isolation policy of Japan at that time denied his return to his home country. Even after being rejected by his home country, he still stay proud to be a Japanese and help to promote the opening up of the country. He later became a successful trader. In the 1862, Otokichi moved from Shanghai and stayed in Singapore to become the first Japanese resident here.

In February 2004, Mr. Leong Foke Meng of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) with the National Environmental Agency (NEA) helped to uncover facts confirming Otokichi’s remains at the Choa Chu Kang Government Cemeteries.

On 27 November 2004 Mihama Town, Japanese Association, Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and NEA of Singapore jointly initiated the exhumation of Otokichi’s remains at the Choa Chu Kang Christian Cemetery. The remains were later cremated and ashes stored at the columbarium of the Japanese Cemetery.

On 17 February 2005 a delegation of about 100 residents from Mihama Town visited Singapore and brought back to Japan a portion of Otokichi’s ashes realizing the home-coming of Otokichi’s remains after 173 years. We shall all pray for his soul to rest in peace.