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Explorer Cafe Spring 2014: April 9, 2014

Books

Videos

Okuribito: Departures

2009, Widescreen. DVD  Arranged alphabetically by title 1st FLOOR

Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and finds himself without a job. He decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad titled 'Departures' thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency. He discovers that the job is actually for a 'Nokanshi' or 'encoffineer,' a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job, Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art, acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death, between the departed and the family of the departed.

Reference Articles

Funerals and Funeralization in Major Religious Traditions Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience 2009, ISBN 9781412951784

Funerals and Funeralization in Cross-Cultural Perspective Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience 2009, ISBN 9781412951784

Thomas, L.-V. (2005). Funeral Rites: An Overview. In L. Jones (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed., Vol. 5, pp. 3233-3241). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.