Death, tradition and westernization in 'Departures'

After the dissolution of the orchestra in which he works as a cellist, Daigo Kobayashi decides to return to the town where he grew up with his wife, establish him in his late mother's house, and starts to work in a funeral parlor. Just as in Hiroshi Shimizu's films the space of retreat is a rural place, in Departures there is a suburban space, where the characters are geographically rural inhabitants, but urban people in terms of semiotics: Daigo's wife, Mika, works as a web designer, a really urban and modern job but, actually able to be done anywhere, and in general all the country characters enjoy the amenities of the urban life. Some shots of the house show a traditional Japanese architecture combined with modern stuff as, for example, a big plasma TV or computers. On the other, the dissolution of the orchestra and therefore the failure of Daigo as a musician is the cause of his return, we will see, to his childhood and past memories. Takita, as well as Shimizu, shows the arrival to the rural place as a changing time: in the case of Shimizu the country represents a place of rest and recuperation; in Departures, the country is a symbol of the Daigo's decision of a new life.

The path of the character

The return to the town of his childhood could be understood as an introspective trip within himself. A remarkable example is the scene after Daigo has returned to the house and find the small violoncello that he used to play when he was a little boy. The image of that object represents the struggle of the character with his own past. We can find an oxymoron in the path of Daigo: the cello represents an spiritual trip to his own birth, to his boyhood, while the Nokanshi (the Japanese processing of the death) that he use to make is an spiritual trip toward the death of his father. Just as the scenes in which Nanmura performs his walking exercises as a proof of his bodily recuperation and Emi's growing emotional attachment to him (Jacoby, 2007, p 71), the Nokalshi represents the Daigo's proof to face to the death and to his new life. Finally, the shots of Daigo playing the small cello in the midst of fields are a symbolical image of his spiritual health, an image of the meeting with the past and with himself.
We can read in Departures a constant contrast between tradition and modernity. The job of the main character involve in the ritual of Nokanshi, while the job of his wife is radically different, moderner (web designer). Tradition and modernity coexist in the same place, in a family unit that moreover reflect the modern japanese structure. In Ornamental Hairpin (1941) Shimizu used the retreat of the country to show a special community unlike familiar structure in the cities, on 1941. In the both of them, there is a purpose of show a view toward a modern structure of the people: a modern community without private space in Ornamental Hairpin (Jacoby, 2007, pp 69), a young modern family without children in Departures.

Death as a metaphor of life

The theme of the death is a fundamental axis of the film and, as we will see, it appears like something incidental, but finally it plays a quite important role within the process of spiritual health of the character. The film use a funny way as a technique to calm down the horrific theme of the death: the first scene, in which Daigo recognize the penis of a transsexual dead woman during a Nokalshi, the filming of the video of a Nokalshi tutorial in which the main character is used as a model, resulting of it a funny and awkward situation, or the scene of the stinking corpse are some examples of how the theme of the death is tackled on the film. In a sense, Departures is a japanese version of Six Feet Under, the american TV Show by Alan Ball, in which along five seasons, the theme of the death is shown as a vital axis of the story of a family who owns a funeral parlor, tackling the death with a similar tragicomic tone.
The death has several meanings on the film: in one hand, the death is shown as a biological fact on the human life. In the other hand, the death is discussed as a period of spiritual transition in the life of Daigo, whose we see the death of his time in Tokyo and the beginning of his new country life. The death, not just as a final, but as a new start, something that we just understand linking it with the japanese processing of the death: the Nokanshi represents a spiritual health of body and soul, a ritual of mediation in which the dead person is able to access to afterlife. Just as the Nokanshi, the changes in Daigo's life represent a bridge to the new life on country.
The last stage of Daigo's spiritual health process is the confrontation with his father's death. During the film we just listen Daigo hating his father because of his abandonment. The death of his father is necessary to the meeting between father and son. Daigo carry out the Nokanshi of his father but, at first, he doesn't recognize him. The Nokanshi means that that the alive ones left to the dead ones, it this case, the acknowledgment of Daigo identifying his own father. In terms of film language, this acknowledgment has three stages: first, the flashbacks in which appears a little Daigo playing the cello with the father and showing themselves their feelings with stones; then, the emotional identification of his father as such, shown it through an out of focus shot that ends getting the shape of a close up of the father (a metaphor of the emotional identification). And last, the final crying of Daigo, who says “dad”. The death, not as a final, but as a proof of the link between Daigo and his father, and Daigo and his memories.

Opening to Western

It's not a banal thing that Departures has been the prizewinner of the Oscar to the foreign movie in the last Academy Awards, because it shows a tendency of the movie towards the westernization. I mean that Departures tries to sell itself, as a product, to the western society. We are just able to understand it if we pay attention to the way how the movie is made, within the field of the narrative and within the field of mise-en-scene and editing. We can establish a link between the narrative elements about the modernization (familiar unit structure, wife's job, etc.) and the tendency to create a mise-en-scene and editing easily understood by the western public. At first, we listen a soundtrack that remind us other american soundtracks of, for example, Michael Nyman, establish it in Departures through a quite western musical design, with melodies increasing dramatic situations and sequences (Daigo playing the cello in the midst of the fields, combined through the editing with different scenes of the character carrying out the Nokanshi) in which the music plays an important role. In the scene of the recital, Daigo and the other members of the orchestra are performing a piece of Johan Sebastian Bach (a famous western melody). As much in musical design as in reference to Bach, the both of these elements shows the tendency of the film to play with some questions that the western public recognize easily.
Departures is an example to understand how a film that tickle about the theme of the death from a quiet japanese perspective is able to open up itself to the western public using western techniques, in order to be sold within the international market. Another example of how is possible to show to the world the japanese society with an easy and accessible film language.


JACOBY, Alexander, «Country retreat. Shimizu Hiroshi's Ornamental Hairpin», pp 63-77, in PHILLIPS Alastair et. al, Japanese Cinema: texts and contexts. London: Routledge, 2007