Akira Kurosawa’s (1910-1998)

IKIRU

("to live")

1952

Starring as

 

The Watanabe household

Municipal bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe, Takashi Shimura

his son Mitsuo Watanabe, Nobuo Kaneko

his daughter-in-law Kazue Watanabe, Kyoko Seki

his brother Kiichi Watanabe, Makoto Kobori

his sister-in-law Tatsu Watanabe, Kumeko Urabe

The Watanabe maid, Yoshie Minami

 

Watanabe's subordinates at City Hall

Toyo, Miki Odagiri

Ono, Kamatari Fujiwara

Noguchi, Minoru Chiaki

Saito, Minosuke Yamada

Sakai, Haruo Tanaka

Obara, the famous comedian Bokuzen Hidari

Kimura, Shinichi Himori

 

Also at City Hall

Deputy mayor, Nobuo Nakamura

City assemblyman, Kazuo Abe

Housewives, Kin Sugai, Eiko Miyoshi, and Fumiko Homma

Yakuza boss, Seiji Miyaguchi

Yakuza with scar, Daisuke Kato

Second yakuza, Sachio Sakai

 

At the hospital

Doctor, Masao Shimizu

Intern, Ko Kimura

Patient, Atsushi Watanabe

 

In various bars and nightclubs

Novelist, Yunosuke Ito

Bar hostess, Yatsuko Tanami

After she resigns from City Hall, Ms. Odagiri also takes Watanabe out on the town

The extensive nightclub and dancehall scenes probably helped sell the project to studio executives.

 

At the wake

Newspaperman, Fuyuki Murakami

Police officer, Ichiro Chiba

 

Original screenplay by Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni, and the director Akira Kurosawa.  Photographed by Asakasu Nakai.  Music by Fumio Hayasaka.

 

Kurosawa demonstrates individuals can transcend chaos, moral confusion, and decadence of the societies they live in through making correct moral choices.  Ikiru has always been one of Kurosawa's greatest successes, and features a lifetime performance by the great Takashi Shimura, who also starred in Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai, and Godzilla (both 1954).  Kurosawa's films are typically set in the civil wars of medieval Japan or in modern Japan under U.S. occupation and postwar reconstruction.

 

Plot Synopsis

Kanji Watanabe is a bureaucrat dying of stomach cancer.  Until the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989, the normal practice in Japan was to keep terminal patients ignorant of their condition.  This practice is accurately portrayed, but must be finessed to make Watanabe aware of the severity of his illness.  Note also how his time preference increases drastically when he realizes he has little time left.  He displays this by embarking on a binge of conspicuous consumption, which turns out to be very unsatisfying.  Never very outgoing, he is unable to communicate with his son, and the two end up in a conflict over money when the father most needs his son's support and understanding.  Determined to accomplish something with what remains of his life, he adopts a frustrated urban renewal project, the conversion of a slum cesspit into a small playground.  The middle third of Ikiru shows Watanabe's efforts to overcome such obstacles as bureaucratic inertia and mob threats.  The course of the housewives through the city bureaucracy is a cinematic gem graphically illustrating government inefficiency in the absence of a profit motive.  The stacks of documents used to dress the office set were old receipts, some up to 20 years old, borrowed from the studio archives.  Especially telling details include the old and forgotten report on improving office efficiency, which Watanabe pulls out of his desk and uses to clean his pen, and the 30 year perfect attendance certificate from the National Conference of Mayors which glares down on him as he recalls that he returned to work rather than wait at the hospital during his son's appendectomy.

 

Akira Kurosawa [1910-1998] was Japan's most highly regarded film director.  His nickname on the set was "tenno," or emperor, and he is also known as "the sensei of cinema."  He coauthored virtually all his own films, and produced a large number of highly literate screenplays filmed by other directors.  Some of his most popular screenplays have been filmed multiple times, and several of his films have been remade in English as The Outrage, The Magnificent Seven, A Fist Full of Dollars, and Star Wars.

 

The Cast

Takashi Shimura [1905-1982], one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century, starred in Kurosawa's The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) (made on a shoestring in the waning days of World War II, and delayed in release by U.S. occupation authorities until 1950, it was remade first by Kurosawa as The Hidden Fortress, and later by George Lucas as Star Wars), Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946), No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), Drunken Angel (1948) as a doctor who tries to reform yakuza Toshiro Mifune, The Quiet Duel (1949), Stray Dog (1949) as Mifune's boss, Rashomon (1950) as the woodcutter, Scandal (1950) as Mifune's lawyer, The Idiot (1951) from the novel by Fyodor Dosoevsky, Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) as the head samurai, Record of a Living Being (1955), The Throne of Blood (1957) as the character corresponding to Macduff, The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Bad Sleep Well (1960) as the second villain, Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), High and Low (1963), Red Beard (1965), and finally, in Kagemusha (1980).  A Toho contract actor, Rashomon was one of his few films for another studio (Daei) and he notably starred as Dr Yamane the paleontologist in Godzilla (1954) and Godzilla's Counterattack (1955), as well as appearing in The Mysterians (Earth Defense Forces) (1957), Mothra (1961), Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster (1964), and most kaiju eigan films until his death.  He also had supporting roles in Hiroshi Ingaki's Samurai Trilogy (1954-56) and Kunio Watanabe's Chushingura (The 47 Sacred Ronin) (1958), and a role as a priest in the "Hoichi the Earless" segment of Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964), based on short stories by Lafcadio Hearn.  Shimura’s characters are generally the moral center of the Kurosawan universe, often providing guidance to the less experienced character played by Mifune.  After 1957, when Shimura played a supporting role in The Throne of Blood, a retelling of Macbeth, his parts became increasingly brief but continued to be highly memorable.  His performances for Kurosawa in Rashomon and Seven Samurai would ensure Shimura's high place in the acting profession, but audience acclaim for the middle-aged character actor was greatly augmented by the favorable reception to Ikiru. 

 

Miki Odagiri debuted in Ikiru at a very young age.  She never acted for Kurosawa again, though he always praised her performance.  She had a highly successful film career throughout the fifties, and then semi-retired.  She continues to act occasionally.

 

Kamatari Fujiwara [1905-1985] made his first film for Kurosawa here.  He also played one of the farmers in Seven Samurai (1954), Record of a Living Being (1955), The Lower Depths (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), where he plays the short peasant Matashichi, a character which inspired C3PO in Star Wars, The Bad Sleep Well (1960), Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), Red Beard (1965), and Kagemusha (1980).

 

Minoru Chiaki [1917-1999] debuted in Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) with Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura.  He starred as one of the samurai in Seven Samurai (1954).  He also appeared with Takashi Shimura in Ikiru (1952), and Record of a Living Being (I Live in Fear) (1955), and played the character corresponding to Banquo in The Throne of Blood (1957), based on Macbeth.  His performance in The Hidden Fortress (1958) as the tall peasant Tahei inspired the character R2D2 in Star Wars.  He also starred in Godzilla’s Counterattack (1955).

 

Bokuzen Hidari [1894-1971], a popular comedian, also starred in Kurosawa's Scandal (1950), The Idiot (1951), Seven Samurai (1954), Record of a Living Being (I Live in Fear) (1955), The Lower Depths (1957).  He also acted in Hiroshi Inagaki's The Three Treasures (1959), Ishiro Honda's The H Man (1960), and he has a cameo in Gamera (1965).

 

Fumiko Homma [1910-], a highly respected stage actress, debuted for Kurosawa in Stray Dog (1949), but made an electrifying impression as the spirit medium who channels Masyuke Mori's ghost in Rashomon (1950).  She also acted in Seven Samurai (1954), Record of a Living Being (1955), Yojimbo (1961), and Red Beard (1965).  She appeared in Ishiro Honda's Daikaiju Baran (1958) and Jun Fukuda's Godzilla versus the Sea Monster (1966).