Cortes, Alder John A.
AB English III-4
FOLA 2023 (Nihongo Part 2)
Reflection Paper

“DEPARTURES (おくりびと)”

Daigo Kobayashi was a devoted cellist from an orchestra in Tokyo that has been dissolved leaving him with no job. He then decided to move back to his old hometown together with his wife, Mika, to get a fresh start. After browsing through the daily newspaper, he landed on a job in an agency as“encoffineer” thinking that “departures” is a travel agency. He badly needed a job at the time and it is a high paying job so he did not refused the offer. At first he was unsure and very reluctant thinking that he entered a job that is indecent or in the Japanese context, unclean. Landing a decent job is very important among Japanese people and it is often the standards of where you are in the society which determines the respect you get from others. It is very peculiar not only in the Japanese context but also in our context to consider death related jobs such an undertaker as a profession. Given the common notion that dealing with the dead is unclean comes our stigma on those people who make a living out of it. Death is inevitable. It is the very cycle of life that we can’t control and something that we are sure of. What is so unnatural about that? Why death commonly is affiliated with bad? Death is something that connects us all, something that drive people together not only in physical but also emotional and spiritual sense. With death comes respect, not only to the deceased but also to the family left behind. But why is that being an encoffineer commonly looked at as a low standard job in many societies? These people deserve more respect the any other. These people took death as a profession. It is merely a profession but an art. They serve as the gatekeepers or the bridge before we go to the last period of our lives and prepare the body for the family with all due respect, skills, and heart. They fulfill more than their moral obligations. The movie showed how delicate and artful dealing with the dead is and how they touched other people’s lives. Daigo did not do it just for the money, his wife left him because he doesn’t want to quit the job. And with that there is something more of what he does, something beyond what he is entitled of doing. In the end his wife came back pregnant but Daigo’s father whom he can’t even remember the face died in a far off island. And that is the point where Mika saw the beauty of Daigo’s job. He will encoffin his own father. There we saw not only the professionalism but the heart of the job. What does it take to be called a professional? Is it your educational attainment? Is it your position in a company? Is it how much money you make? The answer for all of it is no. professionalism doesn’t seed from all the technicalities of life but rather the fruit of how we do things. It is the fruit of skills, craftsmanship, respect, dedication and love in whatever job we do. It is when we found joy and beauty no matter how tiring, rough, or “unclean” our profession is. Profession is dictated by the society, by the people whom we touched their lives in what we have done for them. Let us respect no matter how small or how small we think other jobs are because we may not know the essence of what they are doing. We may not know weight of their sacrifices and the weight of how valuable it is not only for them but also for us. It is the selflessness of a person that makes a profession.