Departures · reception & legacy

2008 · Yojiro Takita

How Departures has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It arrived as the ultimate Oscar-night shock — the gentle Japanese weepie that beat Waltz with Bashir in 2009, and Western critics initially filed it under 'safe middlebrow upset.' Years on, it's been warmly reappraised as a genuinely tender film that earned its tears, not just its trophy.

What's debated

The eternal fight: was its Best Foreign Language Film win over Waltz with Bashir and The Class one of the great Oscar robberies, or did the Academy quietly get it right?

Its footprint

In Japan the film made the once-taboo art of nōkan (ritual encoffinment) suddenly dignified and even fascinating — tourism to its Yamagata locations spiked and the profession got a genuine image rehabilitation, with the ceremony scenes becoming the film's endlessly shared images.

Where it stands

A comfort-canon 'good cry' pick on Letterboxd — Japan's first win in the competitive foreign-language Oscar category, more beloved by audiences than by the cinephiles still litigating 2009.

★ Did you know? Star Masahiro Motoki instigated the film himself after reading mortician Shinmon Aoki's memoir Coffinman, then trained in the encoffinment ritual (and cello) for the role — yet Aoki declined a screen credit because the film drifted from his book's Buddhist perspective.