Background: Departures (Japanese: okuribito, Hepburn: Okuribito, "one who sends off") is a 2008 Japanese drama film directed by Yojiro Takita and starring Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, and Tsutomu Yamazaki. Loosely based on Coffinman, a memoir by Shinmon Aoki, the film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist and stumbles across work as a nokanshi--a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. He is subjected to prejudice from those around him, including from his wife, because of strong social taboos against people who deal with death. Eventually he earns their respect and learns the importance of interpersonal connections through the beauty and dignity of his work.
Context: Motoki, by then in his early 40s and having built a reputation as a realist, was cast as Daigo. Veteran actor Tsutomu Yamazaki was selected for the role of Sasaki; Takita had worked with Yamazaki on We Are Not Alone (1993). Although the character of Mika was initially planned as being the same age as Daigo, the role went to pop singer Ryoko Hirosue, who had previously acted in Takita's Himitsu (Secret) in 1999. Takita explained that a younger actress would better represent the lead couple's growth out of naivety. In a 2009 interview, Takita stated that he had cast "everyone who was on my wish list". Motoki studied the art of encoffinment first-hand from a mortician, and assisted in an encoffining ceremony; he later stated that the experience imbued him with "a sense of mission ... to try to use as much human warmth as I could to restore [the deceased] to a lifelike presence for presentation to her family". Motoki then drilled himself by practising on his talent manager until he felt he had mastered the procedure, one whose intricate, delicate movements he compared to those of the Japanese tea ceremony. Takita attended funeral ceremonies to understand the feelings of bereaved families, while Yamazaki never participated in the encoffinment training. Motoki also learned how to play a cello for the earlier parts of the film. To provide realistic bodies while preventing the corpses from moving, after a lengthy casting process the crew chose extras who could lie as still as possible. For the bath house owner Tsuyako Yamashita, this was not possible owing to the need to see her alive first, and a search for a body double was unfruitful. Ultimately, the crew used digital effects to transplant a still image of the actor during the character's funeral scene, allowing for a realistic effect.
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worked with Yamazaki on We Are Not Alone