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Tombtone And Caner: How Dutch Earnestness Is Revealed In Japanese Film

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The Tombstone and Caner: How Dutch Earnestness is revealed in Japanese Film
CANCER! You have cancer; in 1952 this was a certain death sentence. It was such a death sentence that some doctors believed that it was okay to lie to their patients and not tell them they had cancer (Marks September 8, 2015). Many people would slip into deep depression and just wait for death upon hearing this. Initially this is the case in the film Ikiru but soon the main character, Kanji Watanabe, develops an outlook on life similar to those laid out by Soren Kierkegaard in “At a Graveside”.
In Kierkegaard’s “At a Graveside” he discusses the ideas of death and how to live knowing that we will die but not knowing exactly when we will die (Kierkegaard 93). There are many connections between the Kierkegaard’s text and Ikiru, some are slight and subtle while others take the entire movie to develop. One of the first subtle connections is in the role of the son, Mitsuo, while Watanabe is still alive. This character embodies the son from Kierkegaard’s work when he says “a son who learned to love him and to find contentment in his situation and his father’s work” …show more content…

After the last dinner with Toyo, Watanabe starts to make getting the empty lot cleaned up and turned into a park. He does not know that he can actually ever see the park completed but that does not prevent him from spending days on end working diligently on one step before progressing to the next. This shows that he is not concerned if he actually has the time to complete the project but that he makes sure every step of the project he completes is completed

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