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).