The 2022 British drama, “Living,” came into being because Kazuo Ishiguro was obsessed with adapting the Akira Kurosawa classic. Directed by Oliver Hermanus, the film is not an excessively deferential copy, but has been adapted to suit both the British culture and Bill Nighy.

Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto (“Rashomon” and “Seven Samurai”) and Hideo Oguni’s (“Seven Samurai,” “Throne of Blood” and “The Hidden Fortress”) screenplay was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novel, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” Yet in Tolstoy’s story the protagonist is married to a woman who he finds too demanding. He focuses on his work because he finds his family life intolerable.

In both “Living” and “Ikiru,” the protagonist is a widow, living with his married son, but he is not close to his son or his daughter-in-law, who seem to view him as a bit of an impediment.

Ikiru （生きる））

The 1952 Akira Kurosawa  film begins with what might today be called a “trigger warning.” A black and white x-ray is shown and the narrator, in an emotionless voice reports that the protagonist of the film, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), has stomach cancer. In the 1950s, cancer was a death sentence.

From his tight shoulders and slight slump forward, you understand that this man has spent the last 30 years attempting not to be noticed. He’s busy doing nothing.

全く忙し。。本当は何もしていない

Although he has risen to the position of Citizen Affairs Division Chief (市民課長), he  hides behind great piles of documents filled with requests that will not be fulfilled because in this municipal bureaucracy no one cares to serve the people they are meant to help.

He is not really living.

時間を潰している

彼が生きた時間がない

彼が生きていると言えない

Watanabe is a widower, his wife has been dead for two decades.

二十年前から死んでしまったからです。

Like many Japanese family, the married son, Mitsuo (Nobuo Kaneko), is living with his father. While that should mean the family is intact, Watanabe left the family relations to his late wife and the daughter-in-law hasn’t formed a relationship with him. Watanabe overhears his son and his wife talking. They seem more concerned about his pension and what they stand to inherit than Watanabe’s emotional well-being.

Yet remembering how friendless Watanabe is at work, that problem can’t totally be blamed on the young daughter-in-law. Watanabe was also preoccupied with his work when his son Mitsuo (渡邊光男 played by Nobuo Kaneko) was younger, leaving the raising and comforting of the boy to his mother. And, when we later meet his elder brother Kiichi (渡邊喜一 played by Makoto Kobori), we also see that the brothers were not close.

In 1930, he submitted a proposal to increase efficiency, but nothing came of it. Somewhere along the years, he lost his enthusiasm.

In the grayness of his monotonous routine, he has forgotten how to feel. Although he falls in with a novelist (Yūnosuke Itō ) urges him to embrace the hedonism of Tokyo’s nightlife, Watanabe soon realizes this isn’t what he seeks. Yet when a younger female subordinate Toyo Odagiri (Miki Odagiri) finds him in order to resign, he observes she’s found joy in her life although she is quitting her white collar job to work in a factory. Through her, he realizes there is something he can do with his position to touch future generations with joy.

Watanabe champions a small playground for constituents who are neither rich nor influential. And he learns to loom and lean in and it is the women of those children who are most attentive to his failing health.

At his funeral the attendees note:

The way he gazed out over the site,

like a father or grandfather

tenderly watching a favorite child…

“Ikiru” (生きる) is a verb, meaning simply to live, but the character is everywhere. It is in the word for student, gakusei (学生), and teacher, sensei (先生). It is in the word 生物 (seibutsu) which means living things and becomes 生物 学 (seibutsugaku) to mean biology.

The main character’s last name 渡 means to pass something on or to hand over (x を渡す) and 邊 means side. His first name, Kanji 勘治, means both “intuition” and “to heal” (治すnaosu or 治るnaoru). Yet it is also a homophone for the word for feeling: kanji 感じ.

His older brother’s name means “to rejoice” (喜ぶ）and identifies him as the first son while his own son’s name means “shining” (光る）”boy.”

Living

Of course, the script by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kenji Ishiguro doesn’t have the advantage of bringing meaning to names through Chinese characters and Ishiguro doesn’t go the Charles Dickens’ route of making up names that suggest certain feelings. His characters have common, almost unexceptional names.

The main character’s name is Mr. Rodney Williams (Bill Nighy), the father of Michael Williams (Barney Fishwick) who is married to Fiona (Patsy Ferran). In London 1953, he’s a senior London County Council bureaucrat who gets up every morning, puts on his hat and takes the train. Although there are others who have the same commute, he’s the kind that doesn’t invite chit-chat.  Like Watanabe, he sits behind  piles of paper. He doesn’t slump, but he seems to have withered away into a slender, almost frail man.

A new employee, Mr. Wakeling (Alex Sharp) attempts to help a group of ladies in their bid to turn a World War II bomb site into a children’s playground, but Wakening takes the petition from department to department only to end up circling back to Williams. The petitions is place on a pile that doesn’t look like it’s had anything progress past this office. The petition has died and yet soon Williams finds out he is dying.

Unable to tell his son or daughter-in-law, he decides to commit suicide, but changes his mind and unloads his concerns on an insomniac writer, Mr. Sutherland,  he chances upon.

Yet like Watanabe, Williams doesn’t find satisfaction there. Instead, he finds hope with the young woman who has left to be in a different type of service position. And between her and Wakeling, there is a suggested romance.

Living versus Ikiru

While perhaps as a trigger warning, “Ikiru” begins with an x-ray and the foreboding diagnosis of cancer, “Living” begins with the sounds of the city which includes children. There is a thirty-something mother waiting with a 12-year-old schoolboy o the platform. The 30-miles commute from the workers’ homes outside of London to their office in a train emphasizes how the government workers are distanced from not only the people of the district they serve, but also from each other. They commute together five days a week, but they barely speak with each other.

From the colors of the city, with its denseness emphasized by overhead shots, we leave the confines of the closed compartments of the train to the confines of the governmental offices. Like the office workers of “Ikiru,” the governmental workers of “Living” are both measured and confined by their many stacks of paper.

As Margaret warns Wakeling on his first day, “If your skyscraper isn’t very tall. Or God forbid, you work so fast you don’t have one at all…Then people will suspect you of not having anything very important to do! So here’s your first rule, Mr Wakeling. Keep your skyscraper high!”

Whereas the original Japanese used Watanabe’s name to remind the audience to feel, Ishiguro uses the word “harm.” Williams uses the world three times. Middleton once and the police constable once.

The first time is when as a senior member of the office Williams decides t won’t hurt to shelve a project that needs something or the other like a remittance certificate. As Williams notes: “Then we can keep it here for now. It’ll do no harm.”  Yet we soon see from the frustration of the women hoping for a playground what the exact harm is.

The “ladies’ petition” returns to their department and Wakeling says, “Mr. Harvey at Cleansing insists this is for us after all.” Williams replies as he places the petition in the middle of one of his towers of paper, “Mr Harvey is quite wrong. But we can keep it here. No harm.”

When Williams decides to help the women, he will beg Sir James to reconsider, saying: “I beg you. Or at least. If you would leave the application open for one more week. What harm can that do?” And Williams, indeed, succeeds in having the playground made.

Yet after the funeral, when Middleton takes over for Williams, there’s a matter concerning a school and Middleton says, “Well we can keep it here for now. No harm.”  Wakeling is startled and he realizes that despite everyone’s declaration to be more like Williams during his final days, no one has the courage to change.  Wakeling looks at a letter than Williams had left him and we learn of the contents in a voice over as Wakeling first speaks with Margaret over the phone and then visits the playground where he meets the Police Constable who notes: I recognised Mr Williams, sir. So I knew he had a right to be there. That he wasn’t meaning any harm…”

The Police Constable feels guilty, admitting,

For his own good, sir, I should have persuaded him. Told him to get out the cold. That’s what’s been on my mind, sir… If only I…It was negligent of me, sir. If I’d persuaded him to get out the snow…

Wakening is able to comfort the man, telling him:

No, officer. I think it was for the best. Mr Williams had a terminal illness and it was… right that you allowed him that moment. And I believe you were quite right. He was happy when you saw him. Perhaps as happy as he’d ever been in his life. So I wouldn’t worry yourself any more, officer.

While Shimura’s large eyes seem like shimmering balls of jelly and at times, you feel as them shimmying and quivering as if they would fall out from grief and despair, yet Nighy’s small eyes seemed almost lost, sunken into the wrinkles and folds of time and stagnation. These are two different interpretations of death by the monotony of routine and thoughtless existence. Each valid for its time and culture.

While both Shimura’s Watanabe and Nighy’s Williams are fathers, they become more fatherly in their pursuit of a playground, enlarging the meaning of fatherhood in a manner that engages and enhances the lives of strangers beyond one generation.

Nobel-prize winner on why The Rowan Tree is moving film fans to tears in Living

The Rowan Tree

Oh! Rowan Tree Oh! Rowan Tree!

Thou’lt aye be dear to me,Entwined thou art wi mony ties,O’ hame and infancy.Thy leaves were aye the first o’ spring,Thy flow’rs the simmer’s pride;There was nae sic a bonny treeIn a’ the countrieside

• • Oh! Rowan tree!

How fair wert thou in simmer time,

Wi’ a’ thy clusters whiteHow rich and gay thy autumn dress,Wi’ berries red and bright.On thy fair stem were many names,Which now nae mair I see,But they’re engraven on my heart.Forgot they ne’er can be!

• • Oh! Rowan tree!

We sat aneath thy spreading shade,

The bairnies round thee ran,They pu’d thy bonny berries red,And necklaces they strang.My Mother! Oh, I see her still,She smil’d oor sports to see,Wi’ little Jeanie on her lap,And Jamie at her knee!

• • Oh! Rowan tree!

Oh! there arose my Father’s pray’r,

In holy evening’s calm,How sweet was then my Mither’s voice,In the Martyr’s psalm;Now a’ are gane! we meet nae mairAneath the Rowan Tree;But hallowed thoughts around thee twineO’ hame and infancy.

• • Oh! Rowan tree!

Meaning of unusual words:
simmer=summer
sic=such
bairnies=children
gane=gone

Ikiru

Gondola no Uta (ゴンドラの唄)

A 1915 romantic ballad with lyrics by Isamu Yoshii, and melody by Shinpei Nakayama.

いのち短し
恋せよ少女
朱き唇
褪せぬ間に
熱き血潮の
冷えぬ間に
明日の月日の
ないものを

いのち短し
恋せよ少女
いざ手をとりて
彼の舟に
いざ燃ゆる頬を
君が頬に
ここには誰れも
来ぬものを

いのち短し
恋せよ少女
波に漂う
舟の様に
君が柔手を
我が肩に
ここには人目も
無いものを

いのち短し
恋せよ少女
黒髪の色
褪せぬ間に
心のほのお
消えぬ間に
今日はふたたび
来ぬものを

English Translation:

Life is brief.
Fall in love, young ladies, 
Before the crimson bloom
Fades from your lips
Before the tides of passion
Cool within you,
For there is no such time
as tomorrow, after all

Life is brief.
Fall in love, young ladies, 
Before his hands
Take up his boat
Before the flush of
His cheeks fades
For there is no one
who comes hither

Life is brief.
Fall in love, young ladies, 
Before the boat drifts away
On the waves
Before the hand resting on your shoulder
Becomes frail
For there is no reach here
for the sight of others

Life is brief.
Fall in love, young ladies, 
Before the raven tresses
Begin to fade
Before the flame in your hearts
Blicker and die
For today, once passed,
Will never to come again.