Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, by Margaret Lock

[...]as the medical anthropologist Margaret Lock (2002, 8) explains, in Japan "the cognitive status of the patient is of secondary importance to most people," and even if an individual suffers from irreversible brain damage and loss of consciousness, many people do not recognize him or her as dead.

Vidal, Fernando and Ortega, Francisco. Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject (Forms of Living) (...

See Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death at Google Books:

Lock, Margaret. 2002. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death. Berkeley: Universi...

Learn more about Margaret Lock at McGill University