Deatn, the Sublime

2011_5_2 Death, the Sublime

“Departures” is a story about an ex-cello player from Tokyo, Daigo, who returns to his hometown in rural Japan, Yamagata, to start over in the house his mother left to him when she died. His wife Mika was quite willing to leave Tokyo, or at least she tells him she is. Later we learned differently. He needs employment of course, so not long after they settle in he goes to an establishment he thinks is some kind of Travel Agency called DEPARTURES. But it turns out the owner was looking for a trainee for encoffinment, a person to perform the ceremony of preparing a dead body for its “send off,” which is performed in front of the family. It is a practice that has largely disappeared from the big cities of Japan but is still alive in the rural areas. He of course is horrified at the very idea of working with dead bodies, but he needs a job quickly so he decides to take it but keep it secret from his wife, which works for a little while; but when she finds out she is repulsed by him, because he’s touched dead bodies. His employer and mentor on the job had told Daigo “You were born to do this.” He has begun to believe it. Since he refuses to look for other employment she up and leaves him, going to live with her mother.

His journey from an ex-cello player who performed in concerts to a master of enconffinment is fraught with doubts, upsets and gradual improvement in his craft, as it eventually connects with his artistic bent. The first body he cleans, a very pretty young woman, shocks him by having a penis; the second is an old women who has been dead for two weeks, which makes him retch; and in another case he gets caught in a family squabble about the victim’s death.

The owner of the business, Sasaki, a man in his fifties, befriends Diago and considered him his apprentice and brings him along slowly and patiently, being a very understanding mentor to the young man who never expected to be in this circumstance. He keeps telling Daigo he was born to preform this service. The owner isn’t a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, but he is soberly caring and affectionate in his fashion. He shares a meal with Daigo and tells him to remember “the living eat the dead.” He is obviously pleased with how his young apprentice treats the deceased, reverently, with grace, and utmost skill and sense of beauty and ritual. He will make the grade. Eventually Daigo sees himself as “the gatekeeper to the next stage.” As William Blake said as an old man, “Death is like moving to the next room.”

I loved the movie for dealing with a taboo subject, for its sensitivity, and for portraying the Japanese aesthetic sense, which permeates everything to one degree or another.