I’ve heard about this Kurosawa film for a long time, and I finally watched it recently.
Encounters are all about timing. If I had watched it earlier, I probably wouldn’t have felt much.
But now it feels just right. I was moved to tears multiple times while watching it.
It’s our human duty to enjoy life. The film expresses this idea through the words of a second-rate writer. Greed is rarely a good thing, but craving life is not a flaw.
I’m starting to believe that moral ambiguity and human frailty aren’t shortcomings—they are, in some ways, a form of justice. If there is such a thing as moral truth in this world, it must be something that praises life and promotes cooperation.
We talk about freedom and independence, about boundaries and autonomy, because they enable a better form of cooperation—one that allows life to expand and thrive.
Conversely, suppressing individual will through grand narratives and forcing cooperation in its name is nothing more than diminishing life under the guise of unity.
Selfishness and narrow-mindedness are not inherently bad; they are necessary for civilization to endure. Otherwise, human society might have remained at the level of ants and bees.
Likewise, selflessness and devotion are not always virtuous—beyond a certain point, they become blind obedience and folly.
Social norms are filled with demands from others that disregard individuality. Yet few ever tell you that enjoying life is not just a right but a duty. It is not secondary; it should always be at the very center. A deep longing for life is both beautiful and justified.
Life is brief—we should live it to the fullest.
On Isolation
The film portrays the rift between a father and his son. Though they live under the same roof, they are worlds apart, struggling to communicate.
Whenever the father tries to reach out, his son responds with indifference and misunderstanding. In the end, the father keeps his cancer a secret until the very moment of his death.
This isn’t a story about shallow moral judgments like ingratitude. Human relationships are complex, and even in the film’s brief dialogues, subtle hints emerge. The father’s sacrifices are evident—after losing his wife, he dedicated himself entirely to raising his son, even refused to remarry for his sake. Yet, when his son underwent an appendectomy, he still chose work over staying by his side.
To live in this world and yet remain misunderstood, even by one’s closest family—that is true loneliness.
This reminds me of my relationship with my father. My father is hard to define. I can’t say he has Watanabe’s awareness or great personality. Whenever he speaks, there’s always that dad authority, never learned how to respect others. He wraps selfish thoughts in lies, which only serves as a double insult to both my intellect and my character. And when lying becomes second nature, the consequence is that he won’t believe even when you tell the truth, failing to understand any noble pursuits—only see the world through his own narrow lens. Not to mention the countless little things in life that make it hard to feel any real love. No doubt the love is there—just you have to dig really hard to find it.
When dealing with toxic love, you can’t fully embrace it. I used to simple chose to reject it entirely and distance myself.
The film made me realize how unnecessary this was. There’s no doubt that Watanabe, the protagonist, was a great man. As his colleagues noted, not everyone can face death the way he did. But what I must criticize is that he never told his son—not even at the very end. That was far too cruel.
Lover is never easy. It takes courage to communicate, and the ability to love must be cultivated. But avoiding it just because it’s hard is not the right answer. In fact, we shouldn’t even expect that others will change. Instead just show them a better path and leave the choice to them.
I feel that maturity begins when we learn to appreciate and navigate conditional love. I once discussed this my German friend. It seems that East and West aren’t so different in this regard. Maternal love tends to be closer to unconditional love, while paternal love is often conditional and less absolute. The spiritual patricide is a necessary stage toward personal independence. After moving past that phase, I now believe that we should take on the role of the father ourselves—to forgive, to love, and to show others the right way through our own actions.
Love is patient, love is kind.
On Meaning of Life
A nightlife with the writer did not bring redemption to Watanabe.
Pleasure is not life.
When the patrol officer described how Watanabe was perfectly happy on the swing in the park on the night he died, everyone was surprised.
Why? The man was about to die, the credit for the park he had spent months building was stolen by others. From a material perspective, there was no reason to be happy.
But I’ve been obsessed with this happiness.
Some say that everything we do is to better face death.
I don’t much care for Buddhist notions of emptiness and such. Everything is originally empty, an endless void. And so what? Living is ultimately about building, about creating something out of nothing.
I’ve always been driven by the thirst of knowledge and understanding, to be invincible under the sun (from Vagabond). But taken too far, I find myself becoming the dreamer from Dostoevsky’s writing, “rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire.”(from White Nights)
Life lies in little things. A 20-year-old girl understood better than this 60 years old man. Though she’s making toy rabbits in a factory, she felt she’s becoming friends with every baby in Japan.
My frustrating habit is to constantly question the meaning of the little things I’m doing. But I think that is just a matter of perspective. Take the example of the park project in the film—you could dismiss the significance of building a park, but ultimately you cannot deny the smiling faces of the children playing there at the end of the film.
So when people say this film satirizes Japanese governmental bureaucracy, I think it’s missing the point, because I see reflections of all modern work in it. Office workers easily question the meaning of their jobs, and the key to overcoming this is finding its connection to reality.
When Watanabe finally discovered what he wanted to do and gave himself a purpose, the “Happy Birthday” song from young people in the background seemed to celebrate his rebirth. A stroke of genius.