Learning Guide for Departures

Learning Guide for Departures

Subjects: World Cultures, Transitions;

Social-Emotional Learning:

Moral Ethical Emphasis: Caring, Honesty, Respect;

Ages: 14+; MPAA Rating PG; Drama; 2008; 113 Minutes; Color; Available from Amazon.com.

Note to Teachers: The story found in Departures does not seem to be a Hero’s Journey; it is more clearly a sub-conscious struggle to deal with loss. This struggle, however, is essential in the growth of each individual and may well be the essence of the Hero’s Journey. Teachers can use Departures to help students discover their own process of getting beyond loss as they learn about the more traditional aspects of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. See Student Handout on the Myth of the Hero and Related Archetypes and TWM’s lesson plans and learning for films appropriate to the curriculum.

Learner Outcomes and Objectives: Students will exercise their ability to recognize elements of the Hero’s Journey and its related archetypes. They will come to see how the mythic paradigm can be found in most fine literature and film and is an important part of the consciousness of each individual.

Rationale: By understanding the elements of the Hero’s Journey, students will be better prepared to identify protagonists, antagonists, conflicts and themes in the literature they will read throughout their education as well as in their personal experience with books and movies. Students will be able to entertain the notion that the Hero’s Journey is a part of their own lives.

Description:Daigo a young husband who plays a cello in an orchestra, loses his job and decides to take his wife and move back to his hometown to find work. When he applies for a job advertised as “assisting departures for an NK agency,” he is unaware that the job involves “encoffinment,” a ceremonial preparation of the dead for burial. The job pays well and his wife believes he is assisting in ceremonies such as weddings. Soon the social stigma associated with his jobbegins to make itself known and even his wife leaves him; pregnant, she does not want her child ridiculed because of his father’s career. Daigo, however, has discovered the beauty in his work and learns the value of tending to the dead in terms of its effects on the families and loved ones left to mourn. Ultimately he resolves his long standing estrangement with his father and his wife sees the value in her husband’s work.

Benefits of the Movie: Aside from gaining a better understanding of the monomyth, students can rethink the social constructs associated with death. Those who have lost a loved one may gain a better understanding of the shared tragedy that all humans experience. The film foments a new way to think about death. The cello music that flows like a motif through the film assists in this new awareness.

Parenting Points: This film may be disturbing to children but is very beautiful and the themes are important for young teens to address. Watch the film with your child and share your thoughts and possibly your experiences with loss.

Using Departures in the Classroom:

The Stages of the Hero’s Journey as seen in Departures: After students have been given the elements of the monomyth, Click here, they can be given the worksheets and be expected to find the various stages of the Hero’s Journey in Daigo’s experience. The following suggested responses to the worksheet will help teachers to guide their students to an awareness of the Hero’s Journey as well as the themes of the film itself.

1. The Ordinary World: Daigo’s ordinary world is the city and the orchestra in which he plays his very expensive cello. In terms of his awareness, the ordinary world is fearful of death, repulsed by the bodies and hostile to a father who abandoned him when he was a boy.

2. The Call to Adventure: Daigo, searching for a job in Yamagate, the hometown to which he has returned after the orchestra disbanded, reads a newspaper ad that offers a job opportunity assisting with “departures.” The boss is eager to hire Diago and offers him very high pay, which serves as an aspect of the Call. The boss says, “Fate brought you here. Give it a try.”

3. Refusal of the Call: Daigo resists the job once he discovers the meaning of NK and the tasks associated with tending to dead bodies. He asks, “Can anyone who has never seen dead bodies do this job?” He vomits and shows repulsion several times.

4. Meeting with the Mentor: There are two important mentors in Diego’s journey. ShoeiSadask, Diego’s boss, teaches him respect for life and death in the process of encoffinment and Shokichi, who bathes at the local sento and works at the funeral parlor where bodies are cremated, teaches him to let go of the dead.

5. Crossing the First Threshold: Daigo’s first threshold, when the viewers see that he is fully committed to the job, appears to be the job tending to an old woman whose body had not been discovered for two weeks. After working with the body, vomiting in the process, Daigo bathes and has clearly passed through a threshold.

6. Tests, Allies and Enemies: Daigo is tested several times, most dramaticallywhen his wife tells him she will leave him if he does not quit the job. Allies are found several places in Diego’s experience. The several people who thank him generously for his work with their loved ones can be seen as allies. The woman who runs the bath house, Tsuyako, is clearly an ally. A significant enemy is Daigo’s boyhood friend who tells him he should get quit that repulsive job.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave: The process of recovering from his wife having left him, when he spends time playing his old, child-size cello, can be seen as his approach to the inmost cave. The cave itself can be seen in the death of Tsuyako, whose body Daigo tends with transcendent skill.

8. Ordeal: Daigo’s ordeal, which he resists at first, involves dealing with the dead body of his estranged father. Daigo uses all of the tools of his newfound trade in tending to his father’s body and is able to forgive the man for abandoning his family years ago.

9. Reward:Daigo’s reward is freedom from the anger and pain associated with his father as well as a peaceful understanding of death. His reward is made manifest in the “stone letter” he finds in the death-clenched fist of his father. Daigo had given this stone to his father years ago on a family outing and he was deeply moved by the fact that his father still had the stone. Diego felt both forgiveness and love and gave the stone to his pregnant wife in anticipation of the birth of their child.

10. The Road Back: As the credits roll in the film, Diego can be seen tending to the body of Tsuyako, the woman who ran the bath house, in an aesthetic and expert manner. This scene shows that Diego’s road back is actually the continuation of his journey; he does not need to return to his former ordinary world as he has made his journey into a new ordinary world.

11. Resurrection: Daigo is reborn when in the process of tending to his father’s body he begins to see the man’s face from long ago when father and son were together on a beach and they had exchanged stone letters. The face comes clear to Daigo, thus suggesting that the pain associated with his father has eased.

12. Return with the Elixer: The elixir, awareness of the value of sending the dead on their way with dignity and beauty, is passed to Diego’s wife and to the viewers of the film.

Archetypes in Departures (From Vogler) After students have discussed the stages of the Hero’s Journey, they will find it easy to note the various archetypes that are used in Departures. The following suggestions follow the instructions given in the worksheet on archetypes.

1. The hero in his or her own right:Daigo is a lone hero; his journey is personal in that he is, on an unconscious level, seeking release from the pain caused by being abandoned by his father as a child.

2. Mentor:Daigo’s boss, Shoei Sasaki, serves as his main mentor. Shokichi, the man who runs the funeral parlor, also serves as a mentor.

3. Threshold Guardians: For Daigo, his wife, Mika, is clearly a threshold guardian. She pushes him forward in his commitment to encoffinment by refusing to stay with him and later she pushes him forward when he refuses to tend to his father’s death.

4. Herald: Serving as Herald for Daigo is Yurriko, who works as secretary in the NK office. She tells Daigo that he will do well in his new line of work and later pleads with him to tend to his dead father.

5. Shapeshifter:Daigo is awakened to the necessity of change by his mentor, Sasaki, who shifts from his focus on death during the process of encoffinment to the epicure who relishes food to the degree that he says, “I hate myself.” In shifting from tending to death to tending to nurturing life, the man shifts shape. The room in which he takes his meals, with its lush plant life, contrasts to the business-like décor of his office with the three coffins standing against the wall and is representative of this shift in shape.

6. Shadow:Daigo’s dark side is his unwillingness to forgive his father. To a certain extent, this shadow can be seen in his wife who calls him filthy and refuses to live with him should he keep working in his chosen field.

7. Trickster:

Departures should be seen as more than an effort to teach the momomyth in that the images and ideas in the film are profound. As students find the stages of the Hero’s Journey and the various archetypes, they should be encouraged to note the aesthetic qualities of the film as well as symbols, motifs and imagery. The following assignments can help students focus on the artistic as well as thematic elements in the film.

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1. Ask students to provide presentations on the following subjects using visuals and sound to illustrate the points they are making:

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liThe Japanese concept ofencoffinment; </ilbrbr

liFuneral rituals from cultures represented in the demographic of the classroom;

liHistoric patterns of burial;</ilbrbr

liElizabethKubler-Ross’s stages of grieving;</ilbrbr

liKinds of music used in traditional and non-traditional funerals;</ilbrbr

liThe cello’s use in provoking feeling; </ilbrbr

liCoffins used in various world cultures; </ilbrbr

liConcepts of death as promulgated in various religious beliefs;</ilbrbr

liConcepts of reincarnation;</ilbrbr

liPoetry addressing death, such as Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant, which illustrate varying points of view.</ilbrbr

2. Several elements in the film serve to affirm life and to contrast with the focus on death. Write a paragraph, with direct reference to scenes and descriptions of the action, explaining the use of the following elements in terms of relieving the stress caused by dealing with death:

• The scenes involving foot and eating;
• Views of nature, such as the mountain and the agricultural fields;
• The images of cranes in fields and flying;
• Images of weather, including fog, cold, rain and spring;
• Sexuality, including the fact that Daigo’s wife is pregnant;
• Scenes in which Daigo is playing the cello.
• Images of flowers and blossoms.

3. Certain scenes seem to be symbolic and communicate an idea. In a descriptive and precise paragraph, explain the idea found in one of the following scenes:

• The view of the salmon struggling to return to their spawning grounds, including the dead fish floating by;
• The scene involving the octopus which Daigo and Mika attempt to return to the sea;
• The scene from Daigo’s boyhood in which his father gives him the stone letter;
• The interaction with the funeral director who bids good bye as he lights the fire that burns the coffin of Tsuyako, the woman from the bath house;
• The collection of LP records that belonged to Daigo’s mother;
• The room in which Daigo’s boss takes his meals ;
• The Christmas celebration at the NK office.

4. The following words come from Shokichi, the funeral director. Ask students to write a response to these words in terms of their own experience with death. They should address the comfort or confusion they may find in the words. They may want to address the concept of a gateway in terms of its metaphorical value and even come up with a metaphor that may be more appropriate to their own culture or experience.

“I’ve often thought that maybe death is a gateway. Dying doesn’t mean the end. You go through it and on to the next thing. It’s a gate and as the gatekeeper I’ve sent so many on their way, telling them,“Off you go. We’ll meet again.”

5. Ask the students to reflect on the concept of “stone letters” and to imagine a stone that may communicate a thought that they find difficult to explain to someone. The reflection should be descriptive and may include dialogue as the writer thinks of how the stone would be delivered and received.

6. In terms of the monomyth, students can be asked to write an analysis of Daigo’ experience from his ordinary world to the film’s end. Students may decide that there is no real Hero’s Journey here; simply experience. They may decide that Daigo’s experience is a true Hero’s Journey. Students should refer to the film for support for their ideas and use persuasion to make their points clear.

7. Students can write a persuasive essay in which they assert the value of the archetypes in terms of their use in moving the story forward and in helping Daigo to progress on his journey. They may want to add or subtract specific persons from the list of archetypes and assert ideas of their own.

8. Students can write journal entries addressing their own experience with the death of a loved one. It is sometimes easier to involve students with reflecting about death if they are asked to write about the loss of a pet, an event which can be quite profound in the life of a child.