Kenji Watanabe is a department head in the Japanese bureaucracy. For 30 years he has worked there without taking a single day off. Then one day he learns that he has cancer and only has six months left to live. After the initial and immediate fear of death subsides, he realizes that, numbed by meaningless routines, he has already been dead for 25 years. He decides to use the time he has left to learn to live and spend his final days doing something meaningful. Ikiru is considered by many to be one of Akira Kurosawa's greatest films, alongside Seven Samurai. Unlike the exotic and fireworks-like jidai-geki (period films), his gendai-geki (contemporary films) are far more low-key and contemplative.
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