Biruma no tategoto

Living in Thailand at the age of 10, I saw this movie broadcast on TV. Thirty years later I still think of it. And eventually I became a dharma student. Coincidence? I think not! Such is the awesome impact of this movie. More than an important anti-war film, it can really bring out some seldom expressed feelings - not because of carefully crafted scenarios which bring moral indignation against war, confusion or cruelty, but instead showing a more natural horror of war's results. After watching the film for the third time, I still feel a deep visceral pang when Mizushima covers his face and runs past yet another mountain of rotting bodies he finds on the shores of the river.

What's really sad is that you can't get the movie on DVD!

Powerful, if slow moving, and relentlessly allegorical anti war film. The problem I have with allegorical works, be they movies, plays or novels, is that the characters, being more symbols than living, breathing characters with living, breathing quirks and contradictions, tend toward the stiff and humorless. And with the partial exception of the lone woman in this film, a subtly wry old crone, that is the case here.

What redeems the film and gives it its force is director Kon Ichikawa's imagery and use of music. Aided by his cinematographer Minoru Yokoyama, Ichikawa has many shots that are arresting and that linger in the mind. The most visceral, of course, are the killing fields through which the soldier turned monk Mizushima must pass in order to attain inner peace but for me the most affecting is the shot, from behind, of Mizushima, twin parrots perched on each shoulder, playing "No Place Like Home" on the eponymous musical instrument, child acolyte by his side and Japanese prisoners, behind barbed wire, listening, one hopes attentively and not just sentimentally, to the plaintive song. Which brings me to Ichikawa's use of music, mentioned by several previous reviewers. It is brilliant in its ability to convey the themes of humanity and brotherhood that are at the heart of this eminently good hearted work. In fact, the score is so striking that at times it reminds me of a John Ford film. And where I come from that is high praise, indeed. B plus.

Towards the end of WWII, a group of Japanese soldiers struggle through the chaos of national disintegration, trying to reach the border through the Burmese jungle. Their Captain is musically trained and forms them into an ad hoc male choir in order to maintain morale. Foot soldier Mizushima plays the titular instrument and as such become a talismanic figure in the group. When he later disappears and suffers an existential crisis, his fate comes to obsess the group as a whole.

Ichikawa's iconic piece contains a strong anti-war theme that survives beyond its 1945 setting. Mizushima's troop are timeless, soldiers dreaming of homes, wives, town festivals; clinging to nostalgia to guide them home and fighting on for each other rather than any greater cause inspired by the imagined national community. Much more identifiable with the period are the troop holding out against the British even after national surrender, fanatics looking to die for an Emperor who has forsaken them rather than return to their families and rebuilding of the community. Among these men, there are no songs.

Mizushima's conversion from soldier-musician to selfless monk symbolises a state of reflection that follows all armed conflict. The film has been criticised for failing to confront the barbarism of the Imperial army, but this lack of identification with specific national failings is what gives the film a theme that transgresses to other cultures, conflicts and evils - the coming to terms with a life to be lived in the aftermath of horror. The flaws on the Yamato spirit may not be interrogated, but the atrocities of war are present, most visibly in Mizushima's encounter with the rotting flesh of fallen comrades being picked over by scavenger birds.

The framing is impeccable, and those looking for a quintessential Japanese aesthetic will be surprised by the extensive use of closeups. The music is spare and suitably evocative of military camaraderie and frightened young men coping far from home. Mizushima's journey is both symbolic and highly plausible, as is the reaction of his brothers-in-arms. Great cinema in its own right, and at the very top of the tree in anti-war movies.

Many in the United States have heard about how Germany (and maybe about how Italy) had to do a lot after World War II in order to deal with the residual effects of their actions during the war. It's also worth looking at how Japan had to do the same. Kon Ichikawa's "Biruma no tategoto" ("The Burmese Harp" in English) does a good job with this.

In July, 1945, a Japanese platoon in Burma gets captured by the British army. One of the men - named Mizushima - has to go to the mountains to convince another Japanese platoon to surrender. But the latter platoon refuses to do so and all the members get killed in a shootout. As Mizushima walks back to his platoon, he comes across the bodies of more soldiers who perished in the war. Thus he sees his new mission in life: no longer can he be a soldier, but becomes a Buddhist monk, with the aim of healing all affected by the war.

I see Mizushima as representing what Japan as a society had to do following its defeat in WWII. Aside from the fact that the Land of the Rising Sun has had to be a pacifist country (the US forced it to have a constitution prohibiting military intervention), the bombing of Hiroshima made the Japanese people averse to militarism in general. Certainly this movie's anti-war stance makes it all the more relevant in this day and age. I recommend it.

Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama, The Burmese Harp was the first film that brought director Kon Ichikawa to international attention. It is the story of Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) a Japanese soldier in Burma at the close of World War Two who is sent on a mission by his Captain to inform another unit of the Japanese surrender and to convince them to stop fighting. When the unit refuses to give up and are destroyed by the British Army, only Mizushima remains alive and must come to terms with his nation's defeat. Pretending to be a Buddhist monk, he undergoes a religious conversion when he comes face to face with the staggering amount of death and destruction he sees as he travels across the region in search of his unit. Determined to honor and bury the dead, Mizushima is conflicted about remaining in Burma to live a life of service or returning to Japan to help rebuild his own country.

The film takes its name from a Burmese harp acquired by Mizushima. He has become an expert harpist and plays while the soldiers sing beautiful chorales with a sound so lush it feels as if it is coming from the Mormon Tabernacle. While the depiction of the soldiers may be idealized, The Burmese Harp transcends its limitations to become a universal testament not only to the madness that prevailed in Burma, but to the unspeakable horror of all war. Ichikawa, in spite of the fact that film became a classic, loved the story so much that he filmed it again in 1985.