Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Departures tells the story of a man who takes a job as an "encoffiner," who ceremonially prepares bodies for funerals. Director Yojiro Takita recently met with members of the press to discuss the film. My colleagues and I asked questions on a wide range of topics.

Congratulations on your Oscar. How has life changed since winning the Academy Award?

It doesn't feel like anything has changed in my life per se, but the Oscar has increased the number of offers we get for distribution in other countries. To date we have distribution deals in place with sixty-plus countries, including the U.S., as you know, and many countries in Europe and across Asia as well. We received awards in many countries, including China. We're interested in seeing how the American audience responds.

Why did you want to go into making films?

As a child I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. But I had a chance to meet a director and was able to become an assistant director soon after. It was being an AD that really allowed me to learn about the joy of cinema—the joy of filmmaking, and I wanted to become a director myself. And I think that some god must be watching over me to allow me to be able to make films like this.

Is it such a terrible job in Japan to take care of dead bodies?

The film may exaggerate it a little bit in order to create the character of Daigo. But in reality, the occupation may not be looked down upon as you find in the film. It's certainly not seen as an appealing vocation. One example may be if you were to go to a funeral and see such a ceremony being practiced, the bereaved family members may appreciate the beauty and the gestures and the entire ritual and say "thank you," but if you were to ask that person "Would you be interested in taking on this position yourself?" they would probably say "no." So it's not a blatant prejudice, but it's a certain aversion to death—they want to distance themselves from something which is considered a little bit filthy.

How did you choose the music? It's beautiful.

Joe Hisaishi is the composer. He's very, very talented. We've actually collaborated before on another film and he composed a fantastic score at the time and made the film unforgettable for me. He's able to express the characters' thoughts so effectively with the music and there's something deeply human about them. With this film I gave him a rather difficult task—to use the cello as the primary instrument. And I think he did that with flying colors and came up with a score that allows us to emotionally identify with the protagonist very closely. I have to say I have full trust in him as an artist and I intend to keep working with him on future projects.

While we're on the subject of music, I'd like to point out that I was trying to really pay attention to the five senses with this film. For instance, the nature that surrounds them is very harsh in the winter, but it's also very beautiful at times. I wanted to place the characters in there and show something very distinctively Japanese with the aesthetic and to have the character playing the cello in that scene. I was very attentive to sound, obviously. The absolute silence while the encoffinment is taking place heightened the little sounds that happen: for instance, the fabrics rustling against each other, or the hushed sounds of the bereaved family members, or the drip-drop from the towel as they clean the body. There's also the smell, which you cannot convey cinematically; but I think you can always kind of sense it from how the characters respond. There's the joy of eating. There's also the sensual part of the touching the corpses. All of these I was very attuned to. And you could almost say that the cello has something very sensual about it. It's appropriate that the act of playing a cello seemed very close to cradling a human body like the encoffiners have to do and I think there's an appropriateness to using the cello as the main instrument in this film. Death is a difficult subject, probably in all cultures. Yet, I've seen some Japanese films that deal very well with the interaction between life and death. Is there anything in particular in Japanese culture that facilitates that kind of approach?

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