is a 1956 Japanese drama film directed by Kon Ichikawa. Based on a children's novel of the same name written by Michio Takeyama, it tells the story of Japanese soldiers who fought in the Burma Campaign during World War II. A member of the group goes missing after the war, and the soldiers hope to uncover whether their friend survived, and if he is the same person as a Buddhist monk they see playing a harp. The film was among the first to show the losses of the war from a Japanese soldier's perspective.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1956. In 1985, Ichikawa remade The Burmese Harp in color with a new cast, and the remake was a major box office success, becoming the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1985 and the second largest Japanese box office hit up to that time.
Plot
Private Mizushima, a Japanese soldier, becomes the harp (or saung) player of Captain Inouye's group, composed of soldiers who fight and sing to raise morale in the World War II Burma Campaign. When they are offered shelter in a village, they eventually realize they are being watched by British and Indian soldiers. They retrieve their ammunition, then see the advancing force. Captain Inouye tells the men to sing, laugh and clap, to give the British the impression that they are unaware of their presence. Instead of firing at them, though, the British soldiers begin singing the same melody, "Home! Sweet Home!". Inouye's men learn that the war has ended with the Japanese surrender, and so they surrender to the British.
At a camp, a British captain asks Mizushima to talk down a group of soldiers who are still fighting on a mountain. He agrees to do so and is told by the captain that he has 30 minutes to convince them to surrender. At the mountain, he is almost shot by the hold-out soldiers before they realize he is Japanese. He climbs up to the cave and informs their commander that the war has ended and they should surrender. The commander confers with the other soldiers, and they unanimously decide to fight to the end. Mizushima begs for them to surrender but they do nothing. He decides to ask for more time from the British, but when he creates a surrender flag, the others take it the wrong way and believe he is surrendering for them. They beat him unconscious and leave him on the floor. The cave is bombarded and Mizushima is the only survivor.
Mizushima is helped to recover from his injuries by a monk. One day, Mizushima steals the monk's robe and shaves his head so that he will not be spotted as a soldier. He begins a journey to the camp in Mudon where his comrades were sent. Finding many corpses of dead Japanese soldiers along the way, he decides to bury them.
Captain Inouye and his men are wondering what happened and cling to a belief that Mizushima is still alive. Eventually, they buy a parrot and teach it to say "Mizushima, let's go back to Japan together". They have an old woman villager take it to a monk they suspect is Mizushima in hiding. She returns the next day with another parrot that says "No, I cannot go back". She also gives the captain a letter, that explains that Mizushima has decided not to go back to Japan with them, because he must continue burying the dead while studying as a monk and promoting the peaceful nature of mankind. He states in the letter that if he finishes burying all the fallen soldiers' bodies, then he may return to Japan.
Cast
Rentarō Mikuni as Captain Inouye (Nihongo: 陸軍大尉井上, Rikugun-Tai-i Inoue) Shoji Yasui as PFC. Mizushima (Nihongo: 水島一等兵, Mizushima Ittōhei) Jun Hamamura as Pvt. Ito (Nihongo: 伊藤二等兵, Itō Nitōhei) Taketoshi Naito as Pvt. Kobayashi (Nihongo: 小林二等兵, Kobayashi Nitōhei) Kō Nishimura as Baba (as Akira Nishimura)
Production
Development
Michio Takeyama's novel The Burmese Harp was popular, and director Kon Ichikawa was intrigued by the narrative, but was more interested in transforming the fairy tale tone to a realistic film, and secured Takeyama's permission. Ichikawa likened his desire to make the film to "a call from the heavens".
Ichikawa met with Takeyama to discuss the story, and was surprised when Takeyama revealed he had never been to Burma, having fought in China during the war. Takeyama explained he planned to write about China, but the music he referenced in his story was not commonly found there. For a screenplay, Ichikawa turned to his wife Natto Wada, who wrote it alone and at a fast pace, but based on her husband's concepts.
Filming
Ichikawa hoped to make the film in color, but color cameras were too big, and thus costly, to be moved to Burma. Much of the film was shot in Yasui, Hakone and the Izu Peninsula in Japan.