Departures and NaPo 15

Departures, directed by Yôjirô Takita, is somewhat sentimental, but I could not help but be moved by the home-coming story. Daigo Kobayashi (played by a lovable Masahiro Motoki) gives up a musical career playing the cello and returns to his hometown. There he stumbles into the job of preparing corpses for burial, a work called nokanshi, or "encoffineer." It soon emerges that he is a man wounded by his father's abandonment at the age of six. By sending off the dead in a tender and professional manner, and thus comforting the mourners, he finally achieves consolation for himself. There is a wonderfully comical scene when Daigo has to model as the corpse for a training video featuring his boss and teacher Ikuei Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki). The symbolism of the scene becomes clear gradually as Daigo undergoes a form of rebirth.


spring wind
walking to work
no sweat!

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