Choosing rebirth.

Two men who lived through the Second World War try to find meaning in a post-Imperial Japan. Both played a part in the horrors that their country committed. And both of these men are spurred to reconsider the meaning and purpose of their lives so far, and their lives still unlived, by a catalyst for change. But Masuji Ono, in Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World and Kanji Watanabe, the low level bureaucrat of Akira Kurosawa's film Ikiru offer a stark contrast in what it means to accept responsibility for the decisions that we make.

Masuji Ono thinks too much of himself. Whether in trying to justify his past deeds as a propagandist or looking forward to how he will be thought of, it's all about Ono. Perhaps some of this apparent introspection ad nauseum is due to a first-person narrative structure, but overall Ono's main concern is still Ono. He made a stand for what he believed, or what he thought he believed, when he took up the cause of aggression during the war and now, dishonored and hesitating to embrace the future, he looks back over his life trying to make sense of it all. He had to externalize his guilt and wounded pride on behalf of his daughter and her hopes for marriage by confronting faces from his past, but overall I cannot help but feel that An Artist of the Floating World is about Ono and not the world around him. At the end of the novel we see Ono sitting on a bench in a rebuilt part of his city watching the young workers who are recreating Japan go about their day. We see hope that Ono can find a way to rationalize the changes that have come about in Japan, and can learn to live with his role in the war. Yet Ono's focus remains unwaveringly introspective. There is hope that Ono will find peace, but little hope that he will redefine himself to those around him. His life is for all intents and purposes, over.

Kanji Watanabe is a low-level bureaucrat in Tokyo. He lived through the war carrying out the nuts-and-bolts administrative tasks that allow a nation to function in times of peace and especially in times of war. But his contribution to the war was unremarkable. Even to his coworkers, who call him "the living mummy", Watanabe is a wholly forgettable man. We see him interacting with his grown children who seem only concerned with what their inheritance will be when he dies. Watanabe, like Ono sees the changes happening all around him and he wears his uncertainty and unhappiness in a trademark frown. While Ono had to start confronting his guilt and uncertainties about decisions he made in order to secure an engagement for his daughter, Watanabe is spurred to action when he learns that he has developed stomach cancer and has less than a year to live.

While there is a great amount of overlap in the two characters of Ono and Watanabe, the differences between the two crystallize when Watanabe begins to face death. The title of the film, Ikiru, is Japanese for "to live" and unlike Ono, Watanabe wants nothing more than to make his final days count. In a wonderful parallel to An Artist of the Floating World Watanabe tries to flee from reality after his diagnosis by going to bars frequented by poets, artists, and writers. He meets an artist of the floating world, an aspiring novelist, and the two drink and spend with abandon. But unlike Ono, Watanabe turns from temporary pleasures and the solace of forgetting after only one night. Watanabe has too little time left to hide from life.

Watanabe is desperate to live for once in his life. And after giving up on the floating world he sees hope in the form of a young female coworker who quits the bureaucracy to work at a factory making toys. For Watanabe the new youth culture, more western and less self-subordinating, represents a window to the future and not a cause for churning over the past as it seems to for Ono. Watanabe sees vitality and hope in the young woman, and clings to her, finding vicarious joy in her free spirit. Unlike Ono, Watanabe is ready to fully embrace the New Japan.

Watanabe is used to being a part of a bureaucracy that is more focused on its own inner workings than it is in satisfying the needs of the individuals around it. I think this parallels Ono rather nicely. In a final act of rebirth Watanabe sets about to change this bureaucracy in whatever small way he can. In the early parts of the film we see Watanabe crafting a barrier of red-tape for a group of women from the neighborhood who want a swampy mosquito infested lot to be cleared out. Now, Watanabe seizes upon the needs of these women to take a stand against the person he had previously been. He sets about turning the lot into a children's playground. He humbled himself to bureaucrats, he became bold in confronting a high ranking official with alternate plans for the lot, and was fearless in refusing to cave into gangsters who wanted the land as part of a red-light district. This meek, obsequious man would not be dissuaded. Unlike Ono who seemed to struggle so hard with finding comfort in who he had once been, Watanabe focused on becoming something better.

In what I consider to be one of the most beautiful moments ever filmed we see a triumphant Watanabe sitting on a swing in the park that he helped create, snow falling gently around him, as he passes from life to death. Watanabe did not linger in hesitation. He seized change and created the world he wanted.

Like Ono, Watanabe had regrets. Unlike Ono he had no previous moments of acclaim with which to retreat into nostalgic abandon- only a desire to create change for the better, no matter how small his contribution may be. While Ono's story is one of coming to terms, Watanabe's story is about rebirth and redemption, even in the face of death. Perhaps the greatest difference between the two characters was that Watanabe was not burdened with pride. He did not need to question who he was- he could see himself clearly enough, and had no illusions about his insignificance. For Watanabe it was not a question of who he was, but who he could be.