Ikiru (Living)

Kanji Watanabe, a municipal public servant in a government office, learns that he is dying of an incurable cancer and that he has, at most, only one year left to live. Up to this point he has lived a highly structured life, rarely varying from his routines. He has two children who offer him no comfort. Watanabe decides he must find something to make him feel that his life has not been a total waste. His satisfaction comes in the form of a mother's group who wish to use some abandoned property as the site for a park. He spends the last months of his life creating the children's playground.