Some context: Departures (Japanese: okuribito, Hepburn: Okuribito, "one who sends off") is a 2008 Japanese drama film directed by Yojiro Takita and starring Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, and Tsutomu Yamazaki. Loosely based on Coffinman, a memoir by Shinmon Aoki, the film follows a young man who returns to his hometown after a failed career as a cellist and stumbles across work as a nokanshi--a traditional Japanese ritual mortician. He is subjected to prejudice from those around him, including from his wife, because of strong social taboos against people who deal with death. Eventually he earns their respect and learns the importance of interpersonal connections through the beauty and dignity of his work.
Japanese funerals are highly ritualized affairs which are generally--though not always--conducted in accordance with Buddhist rites. In preparation for the funeral, the body is washed and the orifices are blocked with cotton or gauze. The encoffining ritual (called nokan), as depicted in Departures, is rarely performed, and even then only in rural areas. This ceremony is not standardized, but generally involves professional morticians (Na Guan Shi , nokanshi) ritually preparing the body, dressing the dead in white, and sometimes applying make-up. The body is then put on dry ice in a casket, along with personal possessions and items necessary for the trip to the afterlife.  Despite the importance of death rituals, in traditional Japanese culture the subject is considered unclean as everything related to death is thought to be a source of kegare (defilement). After coming into contact with the dead, individuals must cleanse themselves through purifying rituals. People who work closely with the dead, such as morticians, are thus considered unclean, and during the feudal era those whose work was related to death became burakumin (untouchables), forced to live in their own hamlets and discriminated against by wider society. Despite a cultural shift since the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the stigma of death still has considerable force within Japanese society, and discrimination against the untouchables has continued.  Until 1972, most deaths were dealt with by families, funeral homes, or nokanshi. As of 2014, about 80% of deaths occur in hospitals, and preparation of the bodies is frequently done by hospital staff; in such cases, the family often does not see the body until the funeral. A 1998 survey found that 29.5% of the Japanese population believed in an afterlife, and a further 40% wanted to believe; belief was highest among the young. Belief in the existence of a soul (54%) and a connection between the worlds of the living and the dead (64.9%) was likewise common.
what kinds of rituals?
A: The encoffining ritual (called nokan), as depicted in Departures, is rarely performed, and even then only in rural areas.
Some context: Autechre () are an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are one of the most popular acts signed to UK electronic label Warp Records, through which all of Autechre's full-length albums have been released beginning in 1993 with Incunabula. They have also worked closely with the label Skam. The music of Autechre has shifted gradually throughout their career, from their earlier work's roots in techno, electro, and hip hop to later albums often considered experimental in nature, featuring complex drum programming, subdued melodies, and few stylistic conventions.
The new millennium brought about a drastic change in Autechre's style, demonstrated by Confield (2001) and Draft 7.30 (2003), as well as the Gantz Graf EP (2002). The title track from Gantz Graf inspired an iconic video by British designer Alex Rutterford, featuring an object (or an agglomeration of objects) synchronized to the music as it morphs, pulsates, shakes, and finally dissolves. Rutterford, who had previously created an unofficial video for the Tri Repetae track "Eutow" as part of the Channel 4 music programme Lo-Fi in 2001, claimed the idea for the "Gantz Graf" video came during one of his LSD trips. The second Autechre Peel session EP was also released in 2002, containing four tracks broadcast in 1999, named by John Peel himself. Autechre released two collaborative albums with Andrew M. McKenzie's Hafler Trio collective during the following three years (see collaborations).  The reactions by both professional critics and fans to the release of Confield were mixed, though generally positive. According to Sean Booth, "most of Confield came out of experiments with Max that weren't really applicable in a club environment." In contrast, 2003's Draft 7.30 was seen by some as an easier record to grasp. Booth stated in an interview around the release of Draft 7.30 that "[rhythm] doesn't seem to limit us in the way it did when we first started. Now I think we just get it, we're totally fluent in it and can be more expressive."  Untilted (a play on the word "untitled"), the duo's eighth album, was released in 2005. It roughly continued the sound of their previous two LPs, though featured compositions that mutated greatly during their duration, typically alternating between passages of ambience and heavily processed, precise beats, such as on "Ipacial Section". Its final track, "Sublimit", is at almost sixteen minutes Autechre's longest composition to feature on any of their albums until 2016's elseq 1-5. The release of Untilted was followed by a two-month tour that took the group around Europe, America and Japan, but withdrew them from studio work for an unusual length of time. The outcome of this, coupled with a forced change in studio setup, was a gap of three years between releases, longer than ever before.
What lead to the drastic change?
A:
The title track from Gantz Graf inspired an iconic video by British designer Alex Rutterford, featuring an object (or an agglomeration of objects) synchronized to the music