The story of Watanabe in Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru reflects the ancient idea that one is never more alive than when in the face of death. Watanabe when the story begins is a man about whom one could say, as the narrator does, "It would be difficult to say that he is really alive" (147). Watanabe is an old man, but this does not mean he has lived to this time. Instead, he has merely existed--living entails more than this. He has little awareness of the world around him beyond fearing it and its possible consequences to himself. He is a small man who has made himself smaller in order not to be a burden, not to be a threat, not to be more alive than necessary. All this changes when he learns that he has a limited time left on earth, and he begins to live when he faces death. While that experience of really living may be relatively short, it is intense and real and leaves Watanabe a happy and successful man.
Watanabe does not immediately shift to the state of being alive. Rather, he spends several months in self-absorption, feeling sorry for himself for what has happened to him and also for what has not happened to him. He realizes the waste his life has been and feels the injustice the universe has thrust upon him by taking that life, as he sees it, before his time. It is the influence of Toyo, the young woman who has quit her job to work in a toy factory, that guides the old man toward an act that will give him life for a short time and that will make his life have meaning. She tells him how her work makes her feel: "I feel as if I were friends with all the children in Japan now" (172). She asks why Mr. Watanabe does not do something like she has done.
After this, Mr. Watanabe does indeed throw himself into effecting a change for which he can be remembered--he pushes through a children's park. The fact that he returns to work surprises his colleagues and shows his determination, something they fail to understand at the t...