The 65th Essay: 生きる LIVING (1952, Japan / 2023, UK)
Ryoden Kouki Engineering Co., Ltd.
Company Newsletter Series: “How about Taking a Short Break?”
“What do we live for?” Akira Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru, starring Takashi Shimura, tells the story of a civil servant facing death who reexamines his life and strives to accomplish something meaningful for the citizens before he dies.
Kanji Watanabe, a municipal section chief who has never missed a day of work in thirty years, is diagnosed with stomach cancer and treated coldly by his son. He comes to realize that his life has been largely wasted. But after meeting a young woman, he begins to reconsider what it means to live and devotes himself to transforming a stagnant sewage basin into a public park.
In Aesop’s fable “The Travelers and the Plane Tree,” a tree ridiculed by travelers as useless is, in fact, providing them with a great benefit. Human beings, too, often perform work that quietly supports society without attracting attention.
While criticizing bureaucracy, Ikiru also raises universal questions about the meaning of work, the value of contributing to society, and what we hope to leave behind at the end of our lives.
Please read the full text here.
