Reaction Paper: Okuribito

The movie revolves around Daigo Kobayashi, who had his sights set on playing the cello

for an orchestra, however this dream is crushed as the orchestra gets disbanded. After this, he

decided that he would quit playing the cello and sold his cello worth 18 million yen, and

convinced his wife Mika to go back to his hometown, in Yamagata, and to live there instead in

his late mother’s house. He ends up finding a job placement in a newspaper looking for someone

to assist in departures. He applies for this job and immediately gets accepted, however he did not

know that it was a job opening for a coffiner and not for a travel agency. He still decided to pick

up the job, as he was to be paid 500,000 yen. His first few works were not easy for him, but

eventually he got used to it and word was spreading about this occupation of his. Mika also finds

out, and left him as she got angry that he didn’t tell her about it, and that she thought that he

needed a better job. He was thinking of quitting, but after a talk with his boss, he decided to keep

going with it. Mika eventually comes back, pregnant with their first child. She expressed that she

wanted Daigo to find a better job, but suddenly, he got a call and found out that the bath house

owner had died. Here, Mika was exposed to how Daigo did his work, and decided to accept him

and respect his job. Later on, Daigo finds out that his father had died, and although reluctant at

first, Daigo decided to go see his father with Mika. He did not recognize him and still had some

remorse for him, but as he was upkeeping him, he saw that his father was still holding onto the

small rock that they had promised upon when he was a child, He ended up crying for his father,

and pressed the same stone onto Mika’s belly.

Life is definitely precious and we can see this through the movie. It is fleeting, and we do

not know when we will lose it. This is why we must not let anyone judge us for what we want to
do, because it is our life and we are the ones who get to decide if we want to do something or

not. It is also best that we get our feelings across to the people we cherish and love, before it is

too late and before we completely lose our opportunity to do so.

Other than this, another main theme that I saw throughout the movie was acceptance. The

acceptance of the death of a loved one, as the families of those who lost theirs experienced; the

acceptance of someone for what they want and choose to do, as Mika did to Daigo as she finally

chose to respect his decision to continue doing what he has been doing; and the acceptance of

someone who did you wrong, as Daigo did in the end, wherein he forgave his father and

accepted him after all the years of hating him.

私たちの生活和美しくて大切なので、すきなことをしなくちゃ。