Japan's "Departures" -- depicting the esoteric practices of a mortician who works to preserve the dignity of a person even after death -- Sunday added an Oscar to its international awards haul.
"Okuribito", named Best Foreign Language Film, has raked in more than 3.13 billion yen (35 million dollars) and attracted over 2.7 million viewers since it opened five months ago, according to domestic distributor Shochiku Co.
Apart from winning Japan's most prestigious awards, the movie won a grand prize at the Montreal World Film Festival and scooped up three prizes at the Chinese equivalent of the Academy Awards.
"I am very proud and honoured to receive the Oscar nomination," director Yojiro Takita said on a blog ahead of Sunday night's ceremony.
"'Okuribito' is a very Japanese story, but I am very happy that the universal theme of death was understood by people around the world, across countries and language barriers."
It tells the story of a professional cellist in Tokyo who decides to return to his hometown in rural Yamagata prefecture with his wife to look for a job after his orchestra breaks up.
Against the backdrop of a lush countryside, Daigo Kobayashi -- played by award-winning Masahiro Motoki -- discovers an advertisement seeking someone to "help with departures."
Thinking the job listing to be for a travel agency, Daigo responds, only to find he has signed up to be an undertaker, who places bodies into coffins in a highly ritualized fashion at funeral ceremonies.
Pressured by financial needs, Daigo stays on, and encounters his first assignment -- the gruesome task of putting into a coffin the partly decomposed body of a woman who died a solitary death two weeks earlier.
Due to a tacit taboo surrounding the job's nature, Daigo hides it from his wife, who believes he works as a wedding planner. When she discovers his secret, she temporarily leaves him, dismayed.
"Although I knew this kind of job exists, I didn't know what it was exactly, not what kind of lives (undertakers) lead. I wanted to get a glimpse of a world that is little seen," said Takita in a recent interview with local media.
In order to acquire a better understanding of how the ritual of preparing a deceased affects relatives, Takita said he attended many funeral ceremonies.
"The ritual involves cleaning the deceased, putting on make-up, changing that person's clothes. And there is a ritual aimed at recalling that the body of the deceased at one time glowed," said the 53-year-old director.
"There is such a variety of emotions during that ritual. While there are some who will laugh, there are others who will feel grateful for having met that person in their lives."
The movie is due to be released in 36 countries. It will hit US theatres in May and is slated for release in Europe, a Shochiku spokeswoman said.
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