
For Hidehiro Konno, it was a matter of life and death.
The maternity hospital he operates in Urayasu, just outside of Tokyo, has been caring for mothers and babies for more than 40 years and handles some 600 births a year. But in April, an apartment building next door was torn down, and the chief priest from a local Buddhist temple came to tell Konno what was going up in its place: an indoor cemetery.