“JAPAN’S UNSUNG ACTING GENIUS”

By Raymond Benson

The works of famed director Akira Kurosawa are mostly associated with the samurai film—pictures set in the time of feudal Japan, and usually starring the brilliant actor Toshiro Mifune (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, among others). However, Kurosawa made other kinds of movies that are probably not as well known in the West except to film historians and true cinephiles—and fans of the excellent DVD and Blu-ray label, The Criterion Collection. Some of Kurosawa’s early work was made up of film noir gangster and crime pictures (e.g., Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, The Bad Sleep Well), but also, surprisingly, heartfelt social dramas set in contemporary Japan—about ordinary people. Ikiru is one of the latter, and it’s a movie that Roger Ebert once called Kurosawa’s “greatest film.”

Ikiru is set in Tokyo in the early fifties. Kanji Watanabe (played by the wonderful Takashi Shimura) is a middle-aged bureaucrat in City Hall, the chief of “Public Works.” He has spent the last thirty years behind a desk, stamping endless pieces of paper with his little seal, never causing trouble, and pawning off problems to other departments, which, in turn, direct them to yet more departments. Bureaucracy at its dullest and most inefficient. At the beginning of the story, several women bring in a complaint about a mosquito-infested cesspool in the middle of their district that should be covered or turned into a park or whatever. But no one at City Hall wants to accept the responsibility of doing anything about it, including Watanabe, and even the egotistical mayor.

Contributing to Watanabe’s stagnation are the attitudes of his grown son and his wife, who live with him in the same house. All they’re waiting for is the inheritance that will one day come their way (Watanabe’s wife is long dead). Then the ultimate insult occurs—Watanabe discovers he has stomach cancer and has six months to live. After the initial shock and depression, the news inspires him to undergo a drastic change.

Watanabe suddenly wants to make something of his life while there’s still time. He befriends a young female subordinate and attempts to experience Tokyo’s nightlife, but that doesn’t satisfy him. Finally, he embarks on taking it upon himself to do something about that cesspool and turn it into a children’s playground before he dies.

But there is more going on in Kurosawa’s film—the director has something to say that is universal regarding a) government bureaucracy; b) working for years in a job that provides no pleasure; c) gossip among co-workers and family about things for which they don’t bother to learn the truth; d) the medical profession’s reluctance to tell a patient the hard facts; e) and, finally, how important it is to find something in one’s life that is fulfilling. Ikiru means “to live” in Japanese.

This brings me to the lead actor, Takashi Shimura. While Toshiro Mifune usually gets all the accolades of being “Japan’s greatest actor” etc. etc., and while I don’t begrudge Mifune-san this praise, I believe Shimura-san had a longer, deeper, and more varied career as an actor. If you’ve seen Rashomon or Seven Samurai, then you know who he is—Shimura played the leader of the seven samurai, and he was the woodcutter in Rashomon. In fact, Shimura, was in twenty-one of Kurosawa’s thirty films (Mifune was in sixteen). Shimura also appeared in Gojira (Godzilla, 1954, and its American cut, Godzilla—King of the Monsters, 1956) in a major role of a paleontologist. The actor appeared in several other Toho Studios monster movies released worldwide. In fact, Shimura was in over 200 films between 1934 and 1981 (he died in 1982 at the age of 76). Than man was a genius. One only has to compare the actor’s performances in both Ikiru and Seven Samurai to appreciate the diversity this talented actor possessed. Takashi Shimura is Japan’s greatest unsung cinema thespian.

Criterion has re-issued Ikiru with a new, very good-looking restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. There is an audio commentary from 2003 by Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Supplements include a 90-minute documentary from 2000 about Kurosawa that features interviews with the director; a lengthy documentary from 2003 on Ikiru featuring interviews with Kurosawa, one of the script writers, other members of the crew, and Takashi Shimura. There’s a new English subtitle translation, and the obligatory trailer. An essay by critic and travel writer Pico Iyer and a reprint from critic Donald Richie’s book The Films of Akira Kurosawa are included in the booklet.

Ikiru is a movie about humanity, life, and death, and it’s perhaps Kurosawa’s most personal film. That means it’s a must for connoisseurs of foreign cinema.

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