Kurosawa's existential masterpiece

a mediation on the meaning of life

Jeffrey Gordon

pp. 137-151

in: Human Studies 20 (2), 1997.

Abstract

In the first part of the paper, I try to clarify the cluster of moods and questions we refer to generically as the problem of the meaning of life. I propose that the question of meaning emerges when we perform a spontaneous transcendental reduction on the phenomenon "my life,' a reduction that leaves us confronting an unjustified and unjustifiable curiosity. In Part 2, I turn to the film ikiru, Kurosawa's masterpiece of 1952, for an existentialist resolution of the problem.