Ikinai

Ikinai (生きない, Ikinai) (transl. (I am) not living/alive/(I) will not live)^[1] (also known as Suicide Bus) is a 1998 Japanese comedy drama film directed by debutant Hiroshi Shimizu and starring Dankan and Nanako Okouchi.

Ikinai
poster
japanese	生きない
Directed by	Hiroshi Shimizu
Written by	Dankan
Produced by	Masayuki Mori Yasushi Tsuge Takio Yoshida
Starring	Dankan Nanako Okouchi
Cinematography	Katsumi Yanagishima
Edited by	Yoshinori Ohta
Music by	Maya
Production company	Office Kitano
Release date	11 August 1998 (1998-08-11)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

The film is about a group of bus passengers on a trip in Okinawa who want to commit suicide so that their families will receive their life insurances payouts despite their own financial issues.^[2][3]

The film won awards at the Locarno Film Festival and at the Busan International Film Festival.^[4]

Premise

Mitsuki, a young woman, receives from her uncle a bus ticket for a tour on the island of Okinawa. She joins the group and the trip. However all the other passengers have planned it only in order to kill themselves .

Cast

• Dankan as Aragaki
• Nanako Okouchi [jp] as Mitsuki
• Toshinori Omi as Kimura
• Ippei Soda [jp] as Ozawa
• Yoichi Nukumizu as Yashiro
• Great Gidayu [jp] as Nose
• Hiroyuki Kishi [jp] as Mochizuki
• Takashi Mitsuhashi as Komatsu
• Mitsuo Togioka as Taguchi
• Misayo Haruki as Fukuda
• Ichirô Ogura [jp] as Kanda
• Tarō Ishida as Noguchi
• Takenori Murano [jp] as Itô

Production

The film is Shimizu's directorial debut; he had been so far a long-time collaborator of Takeshi Kitano.^[4]

Reception

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that "Hiroshi Shimizu is a debutant director, a former assistant to Takeshi Kitano, and his Ikinai is an unexpectedly moving essay on the nature of death" and that the film was "A very unsettling picture, arrestingly original, and possessed of a distinctive, seriocomic tone"^[5] Derek Elley of Variety wrote: "Neat idea of a dozen Japanese who hire a tour bus with the express purpose of committing communal suicide partly succeeds as a stylized, existential road movie, but an underdeveloped script leaves the viewer with too much time to ponder the story’s loose ends instead of being engrossed in the characters and ambience".^[6] Time Out found the film "fascinating".^[7]

Analysis

This film was found to offer an approach of the sensitive topic of suicide through humor and compassion.^[8]

Remakes

The film was remade unofficially in India twice: in Telugu as Mee Sreyobhilashi (2007)^[9] and in Kannada as Lift Kodla (2010).^[10]

References

1. Schilling, Mark (1 November 1999). Contemporary Japanese Film. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-0-8348-0415-9.
2. Hein, Laura; Selden, Mark (April 2003). Islands of Discontent. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-1866-7. Shimizu Hiroshi's black comedy Ikinai (1998) is all about a tour group that travel to Okinawa prescisely in order to die, so that their families can earn the insurance money and pay off mounting debts
3. Padgaonkar, Latika (2011). Asian Film Journeys: Selection from Cinemaya. Wisdom Tree Publishers. Ikinai (1998) by Hirsohi Shimizu is the inevitable nemesis of a civilisation that has ove-reached itself, hurtling towards its doom. The film captures the last journey of a group of satiated people who embark on a trip to end their lives with the intention of saving their families from debts.
4. "Hiroshi Shimizu | La Semaine de la Critique of Festival de Cannes". Semaine de la Critique du Festival de Cannes. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
5. Bradshaw, Peter (March 3, 2000). "Ikinai". The Guardian.
6. Elley, Derek (October 5, 1998). "Ikinai". Variety.
7. GA (2012-09-10). "Ikinai". Time Out Worldwide. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
8. Uhde, Yvonne Ng; Uhde, Jan (1 January 2000). Latent images: Film in Singapore. Oxford University Press in collaboration with Ngee Ann Polytechnic. ISBN 978-0-19-588714-3. Hiroshi Shimizu treats human frailty with humour and compassion in his debut feature, Ikinai (1998)
9. Kavirayani, Suresh (29 January 2017). "Copycats in Tollywood". Deccan Chronicle. Archived from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
10. Rajapur, V. S. "Jaggesh proves his mettle again with 'Lift Kodla'". IANS – via Nowrunning.

External links

• Ikinai at IMDb