“They say there’s something noble about suffering and it’s true. Misfortune teaches us the truth.”
Studies consistently show that Americans are overworked, over-stressed, and under rested as a result of our workplace culture. In addition to spending more time in the office, technological advancements like the smartphone have allowed our work to creep out of our cubicles and into our lives at home, forcing workers to check in with the office remotely while they should be doing things like engaging with their families at the dinner table. As American society becomes increasingly engrossed in its work and the companies that employ them, greater perspective on what is important and what can wait is needed if a healthy balance between work and life is to ever be regained. “Ikiru” is a Japanese word meaning “to live.” The film’s portrayal of a man who dedicated his life to his responsibilities, both the professional and the personal, at the expense of his own well-being, who doesn’t truly experience what it means to control his own life until it begins to slip away from him is a cautionary tale for our current reality.
Ikiru follows the story of Mr. Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a thirty-year veteran bureaucrat for a local Japanese government who currently serves as the Chief of Public Affairs. After being diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, Mr. Watanabe sets out to find meaning before he passes on. After first attempting to bond with his son and daughter-in-law to no success, he becomes inspired to bring happiness to others by his unselfish co-worker Toyo (Miki Odagiri), deciding to get a playground built for children. He sets out to navigate bureaucratic red tape and societal apathy to realize his goal before it’s too late.
Ikiru plays like a warning from the past that was not heeded; a piercing commentary on a culture that prioritizes and lionizes the idea of work over all else, including the enjoyment and embracing of life. The film begins with a commentary on bureaucracy represented by the experience of a group of local mothers trying to get an open cesspool replaced with a park space for their children. Each public department of their local government passes the buck on to the next, insisting it is not their job to replace the cesspool but some other department. It is reflective of the soulless, faux busyness that constitutes workplace culture in the 1950s Japanese setting depicted in the film, but is also reminiscent of the current American work culture that creates an environment where people have ceased being human beings and resigned themselves to being cogs in a machine. This lack of humanity is not only reflected in how we treat others while performing our jobs, but this culture eventually comes to affect how we view ourselves. Ikiru makes the point that such dogged dedication to work is eventually all for naught; something that we come to regret during our final days when all we can remember is being “busy” yet having zero to show for our dedication. American workers are trained and pressured to give and to give to their occupations and those that sign their checks at the neglect of all else, leaving no room for not just life’s leisures, but life’s other responsibilities to our homes and families. Any unwillingness to forgo 50-70 hour work weeks is seen as not just neglectful of one’s duties, but as a deficit in character and personality. But when our time at work finally comes to an end, and our workplaces throw us a goodbye luncheon then hire a replacement and forget us by the following year, what are we left with as individuals? What do we have to show for our sacrifices?
Faced with his own mortality Kanji begins to reflect on his relationship with his late wife and his son Mitsuo (Nobuo Kaneko), his love for them, and the ways in which he neglected those that he felt for in favor of devoting his time to other things in his life that were now rendered inconsequential. Kurosawa ends this scene of reflection with Kanji lying alone, weeping with regret, while his certificate of commendation for twenty-five years of service at his job hover above him on his mantle, unable to buttress his remorse for the years of life he has wasted. In the end, even as Kanji’s efforts succeed in getting the park built, they are ignored by the Deputy Mayor of the town and other top officials; he isn’t even acknowledged during its dedication. Despite this, he is not forgotten by the local townspeople. These facts are a further rumination on the futility of giving one’s all to a bureaucratic or corporate entity at the expense of establishing more lasting and meaningful connections with those we interact with directly. Appreciation of who you are and what you do is more likely to come from those we face daily who don’t see us as a source of labor or cog in a machine that fuels the vehicle heading toward their own dividends, but as a neighbor or friend whose presence they come to value outside of what we can do for them. In a society that runs on capital, both human and monetary, learning to focus more on those we love and care for rather than the job that pays our bills is paramount to establishing a true sense of happiness and self-worth. One can only hope any resistance to our overworked culture lasts more than one night as it did in this film.
In addition to its rumination on work-life balance, Ikiru also explores the issue of the elderly, how susceptible they can be to loneliness, and how neglected and forgotten they can become by the generations that followed them. This explored most closely in Mr. Watanabi and Mitsuo’s father-son relationship. Mitsuo has come to forget all that his father has done and sacrificed for him as he has begun his own family with his wife Kazue (Kyôko Seki). Mitsuo sees his father only as a benefactor, an obstacle standing in his way of obtaining the fortune he needs for his own ends. This selfishness blinds Mitsuo from recognizing the moments when his father needs him most, searching for an ear to listen and shoulder to lean on as he faces his final days. Their relationship mirrors America’s relationship with its elderly population as a whole. Older people in America become invisible once they reach a certain age, their fears and concerns either cynically exploited for political gain, or cast to the wayside completely. In contrast to how the elderly are often integrated into the families created by their children in other cultures, American elders are left alone in their own homes, cut off from those they’ve raised and eventually transferred to homes built specifically for them and staffed by complete strangers. Mr. Watanabi’s relationship with, and dependence on, Toyo, reflects not just his battle with mortality but how alone he has become in his old age. The young people in his life failed to appreciate this problem and their role in it; this is best displayed by the way his son and the co-worker continually cut off Kanji during conversation when he attempts to share his deepest fears and feelings for them as he slowly withers away.
Takashi Shimura is superb as Mr. Kanji Watanabi, convincingly portraying an elderly man now face-to-face with his own mortality and the reality that he took his time on Earth for granted. There’s one specific scene (pictured above) where Kanji solemnly sings Life is Brief, a song about finding love in life while you’re still alive and able to as tears stream down his face is particularly poignant and drive home the emotional turmoil from which Kanji suffers. Shimura completely embodies the confusion, pain, and inner turmoil that certain death has on the human mind and condition, convincingly portraying every human emotion onscreen during his performance. Miki Odagiri also stands out as Mr. Watanabi’s bubbly and precocious young co-worker Toyo Odagiri, whose energy and instance on enjoying life to its fullest serve as the impetus for his own awakening and dedication to building the playground before his death.
The camera work on display from Kurosawa remains magnificent over 60 years later. I particularly enjoyed his use of mirrors to get some great shots in the film that display the actors and their performances through their reflections. Kurosawa also makes good use of visual and auditory cues in the film. At the moment when Kanji has his breakthrough on what he can contribute to the world before his death, a party in the restaurant he is in simultaneously breaks out into the Happy Birthday song for its guest of honor, signifying the figurative rebirth Kanji has just undergone. But aside from his visual storytelling, Kurosawa’s directorial and writing prowess shines through in Ikiru by way of the emotional and thematic depth he presents onscreen through his character development and examination. That a nearly seventy year old film can have such relevancy and resonance to modern society is a testament to the care and amount of work the director put into crafting the story.
Ikiru is a film that has stood the test of time, accurately portraying the consequences of a life lived on behalf of faceless, uncaring institutions at the neglect of one’s own well-being and the lives of their loved ones. The experiences of Mr. Watanabe post-cancer diagnosis are the perfect encapsulation of the film’s title; to live is not simply to exist, or to make money or work in a career. To live is to experience all that life has to offer, all of its joys, all of the beings that we are surrounded by and live next to, all that we desire and gain happiness from. As America tries to reconcile a culture that features growing dominance by corporations, Ikiru still serves as a potent warning of the perils of work-life imbalance and a guide of what we change in order to ensure that we experience a life that fulfills us as individuals instead of systemic machines.
Image: Janus Films
