 Getting funding for the project was difficult because of the taboos against death , and the crew had to approach several companies before Departures was approved by Toshiaki Nakazawa and Yasuhiro Mase . According to the film 's director , Yōjirō Takita , a consideration in taking on the film was the age of the crew : " we got to a certain point in our lives when death was creeping up to become a factor around us " . Kundō Koyama was enlisted to provide the script , his first for a feature film ; his previous experience had been in scripting for television and stage . Takita , who had begun his career in the pink film genre before entering mainstream filmmaking in 1986 with Comic Magazine , took on the director 's role in 2006 , after producer Toshiaki Nakazawa presented him with the first draft of the script . In a later interview he stated " I wanted to make a film from the perspective of a person who deals with something so universal and yet is looked down upon , and even discriminated against " . Although he knew of the encoffining ceremony , he had never seen one performed . 
