Ikiru is a 1952 Japanese drama film directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat and his final quest for meaning. The screenplay was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Shinobu Hashimoto was a Japanese screenwriter, film director and producer. A frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa, he wrote the scripts for such internationally acclaimed films as Rashomon and Seven Samurai.