User reviews

`I cannot leave the bones lying scattered on the hills.'

More melodramatic than his harrowing Fires On The Plain, Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp is still an excellent film and a fascinating glimpse at another perspective of the 2nd World War than the usual (myopic and infantile) Hollywood triumphalism. As with many Japanese films from this period, from Kurosawa to Godzilla, it has an elegiac and reflective quality to it born of the shock and disillusionment that followed the war.

I personally was a little uncomfortable with the first 20 minutes of the film that were a little hokey with the singing platoon trying to slip through the forests of Burma to the Thai frontier. However, the film really begins to become compelling and very poetic with the character Mizushima's mission to Triangle Mountain and his voyage south to Mudon to rejoin his unit now in prison camp. Undergoing a symbolic `death' and injured, he is nursed by a priest, but steals the priest's garb as a disguise. However, on the way he passes great numbers of Japanese and is horrified by what he sees. When he arrives at his destination and is staying at a monastery, one monk comments, `You seem to have come through such severe hard training.' He cannot return to his unit. He is determined to bury the dead, to extend empathy to each of them and to pray for their souls. The physical journey is symbolic of a physiological and spiritual journey and is some very creative and effective storytelling. There is much more to the movie, plot wise and thematically, than this, but this is what impressed me most.

The imagery is incredible whether it is raindrops collecting and then running along barbed wire, dripping off; or the mud along the riverbanks; or the scene of Mizushima burying corpses at the river, a few villagers standing behind, watching; or the priest bathing in the river; or the shot of Mizushima disappearing into the mist. There is one moment in the prison camp which occurs during a rainstorm. I was really impressed with the natural lighting which gave me the sense of being there. I have looked out windows on days like that as those characters are and the experience "feels like that scene looks". It is incredible how evocative the Japanese films of the period were.

The film reminded me of Stone's Platoon with similar music, symbolism, characters, and melodrama. It also seems to have affinities with Apocalypse Now, in that the central concern is not action or tension (though they do not lack these qualities) but potent ideas and a sense of mystery. Both Apocalypse and Harp involve `pilgrimages' and characters transformed by the horror of the situation. They both involve characters unable to return home after this evolution. I do not know if either of these films was influenced by The Burmese Harp, but if they were they modeled on an excellent and moving predecessor.

Akira Ifukube's score is classic and will probably sound somewhat familiar to the viewer. He has scored nearly 260 films, including films in the popular Zatoichi series and many of Toho's sci-fi films.

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!

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.

This is a film about the immediate aftermath of war from the perspective of the defeated. A Japanese company exhausted by their retreat through the Burmese jungle learn of their nation's surrender. At the request of their allied captors one of their number, Mizushima, agrees to journey to a mountain stronghold where another company is still holding out and engaging in combat. He tries to persuade his compatriots to lay down their arms and narrowly escapes death when they are massacred after refusing to give in. Appalled by the carnage around him, Mizushima decides not to return to his colleagues or country. Disguised as a Buddhist monk, he embarks on the task of laying to rest the war dead that would otherwise fall prey to the vultures. There is nothing in the way of plot beyond this. "The Burmese Harp" is that rare thing, a war film that does not rely on action. Rather does it attempt to define the innate dignity of a former aggressor attempting to salvage some sort of meaning through reparation rather than taking the comfortable course that peace can offer. Ichikawa's tender tribute to a form of saintliness sometimes totters on the tightrope of sentimentality and oversimplification - did ever weary soldiers sing more beautifully! - but by the end the message overrides all doubts. We are witnessing a proud expansionist nation coming to terms with collapse and attempting, through the powerful symbol of Mizushima, to expiate its past. Ichikawa made this film towards the end of the golden age of monochrome. that of Welles, Reed, Wyler and Ford. Like those giants he gives us wonderful closeups. "The Burmese Harp" abounds in evocative images of Burmese villagers, Buddhist monks and Japanese soldier that once seen leave an indelible impression within the mind.

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.

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.

The grainy black and white can't hide the beauty of this film. Luscious and dealing with the deepest human feelings of war and death and rebirth. This movie is one of the all time greatest ever made. If it doesn't touch your soul, you're missing out and must be numb, cause the acting and the passion and the deep feelings the whole cast puts into their roles is musical in it's beauty. The lush settings and the burmese culture stand out as a slice of history we shouldn't miss.

I feel destined to like but not quite love every Kon Ichikawa film I see that isn't Tokyo Olympiad. He's got a style all his own and I can see how the films he makes have impacted people, but they never quite hit the mark for me. I'm a bit detached from a good deal of his work, but I rarely find myself disliking what I've seen.

With The Burmese Harp, he makes an anti-war film that mostly takes place after the fighting's over, and has a unique way of looking at PTSD that is quite affecting, especially toward the end. There's one soldier who goes missing from his squad, adopts the lifestyle of a monk, and then remains searched for by his ex-soldiers who all want to locate him so they can return home, officially concluding their activities in the war.

I can appreciate The Burmese Harp would've been more moving upon release, and maybe offered some catharsis (even if other parts are downbeat and show surprisingly bleak sights for a film of this age... though another Japanese movie about the aftermath of WW2, Hiroshima, did predate this one and go further in certain places).

UPDATE: I forgot Kon Ichikawa did Fires on the Plain (1959). That was a great anti-war movie, and had more of an impact on me.

I think it's a solid older movie. It holds up better than a good many films of its age, but I don't quite love it as much as some of the very best films of its type that came out roughly in this era. It's good, for sure; I just wasn't finding myself loving it.

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.

A typical movie of that era, sentimental but very unrealistic.

There is no real war, nor you see how ferocious the Japanese were against unarmed people. The musical element is poetic and the scenarios of nature compensate for the mediocre actors.

Last Thursday night I was sitting in a tiny Amtrak station in Bloomington, Illinois waiting for my train to take me to my beautiful girlfriend in Chicago. As I sitting there, I was joined by a group of stereotypical sorority girls from Illinois State University. For almost an hour I was subjected to their countless stories about meaningless sex, Lady Gaga and the "pounding of shots" that they were so excited to soon be doing in the windy city. By the time we boarded the train, I had realized that I was alone in the car with these five exhausting females. I scurried to the far back to make sure that I could secure a seat by myself and far away from these strangers.

My efforts were in vain because one of them spotted my fraternity letters and found it necessary to try and sit next to me. "You're a frat boy, you may enjoy some of my stories". I could not think of any other way to make her leave me alone, so I whipped out my laptop and started watching my next film from the 1077. "What 'cha watchin'" she asked. I answered - "a black and white Japanese anti-war movie made in 1956". After hearing this, it did not take her long to jump out of her seat and rejoin her group of woo-girls. The Burmese Harp saved the day.

Little did I know that this movie would not only save me from two hours of annoyance, but it would also be an extremely rewarding viewing experience. Though I was watching it on my laptop, I was still in awe of the Criterion DVD quality and the flawlessness of the hushed black and white. The cinematography is simple and the landscaping of Burma is vast and magnificent looking. It was easy to see that the filmmaker was not interesting in a mass amount of dialogue. It was the striking subtlety in the visual style that properly denoted the overall theme of the movie.

The Burmese Harp is about a Japanese soldier stationed in Burma during the days immediately following the end of World War II. He has developed a love for playing the harp and uses it to signal danger to his troop. His playing is also used as a way to raise moral in the lonely mountains of Burma. Music, whether instrumental or vocal, plays a major role in the film. In fact, it seemed like the majority of the communication was presented through song. The sound of the harp is soothing and easy on the ears. It is a beautiful instrument that compliments the smooth visuals.

The story is also vividly entertaining in is simplicity. After retreating to the British, the soldier - Mizushima - is sent to try and convince another Japanese troop to surrender. He fails in doing this and the entire troop is eventually killed by British forces. This leads to Mizushima, and his harp, being separated from his fellow soldiers and he is now left to roam the countryside of Burma. As we walks, he meets a spiritual leader and realizes the devastatingly high amount of Japanese casualties caused by the violence of World War II. He sees the bodies of thousands of soldiers with his own eyes. He is traumatized and dedicates his life to giving them a proper burial.

The Burmese Harp is the first film by Kon Ichikawa to be seen outside of Japan. It is also one of the first Japanese movies to receive critical acclaim in the United States. What really makes it stand out is that it was the first example of an anti-World War II statement being made by the Japanese through cinema. We forget that everybody is hurt by war, and that the lines are not always as clear as good versus evil. The men in the Japanese army had families, kids and dreams of their own. They just wanted to return home - though they would find that home hardly existed as they knew it before the war.

Yes, I may be in debt to The Burmese Harp for saving me from the incoherent ramblings of a loud and proud party animal, but I also legitimately enjoyed it on almost every level. This is a great movie and could serve as an outstanding introduction into Japanese, Asian or world cinema. I am a big fan. I immediately bought the Criterion DVD. You should borrow it sometime...

This is a justly famous film and well-received by reviewers, however, I could not watch the film without a sense of ironic detachment, especially when it is a Japanese filmmaker who is making a movie about his country's soldiers during WWII, and in a spot made notoriously hot for their enemies, Burma.

I could not but feel that whatever the good and pacifist intentions of the scriptwriters and director, that there was a disingenuousness about the depiction of Japanese soldiers as polite and caring gentlemen who could do no wrong. The key character here who saves the film is Mizushima, the one soldier who defects to become a Buddhist priest, and is not only outstandingly musical, but also able to "look like a native" Burmese, when wearing a sarong. Mizushima has the symbolic role of the Japanese conscience after the aftermath of WWII, when countries who were attacked and subjugated by the Japanese were still reeling from the atrocities suffered at their hands. The fact that only one female, that of an old Burmese woman, appears in this film -- she conducts friendly exchanges of fruit with the soldiers -- is another ironic detail, when one remembers that scores of women and young girls were raped and prostituted by Japanese soldiers in virtually everyone of their occupied countries.

Is one to take the skillful filming -- all the poetic shots of scenery and of actors' faces admired by other reviewers -- at face value? Mizushima, the soldier who fails to convince the holdouts to surrender (the only reference to Japanese fanaticism), is the only one who undergoes a spiritual change by the war and who suffers any guilt: he not only rejects further killing and his life as a soldier, but he alone rejects his nationality; this is signified by his desire not to return to Japan with his fellow soldiers at the end of the war. As part of the cast, there is a role for a pair of talking parrots, who have been trained to mimic the pleadings of his compatriots to return to Japan. They offer a light but additionally ironic touch to contrast the difference in Mizushima's and the other soldiers' attitudes. Nowhere in the film, except in the stance of passive resistance that the Buddhist priest is known to take, do the soldiers or the filmmakers acknowledge the aggression of their own country as the cause of the war and reason for all these deaths. On the other hand, the "enemy" is also emasculated of his adversarial role by the filmmakers' particular stance, and the viewer is made to feel that the Japanese seem to have felt no enmity toward them. Was I alone in this reaction?

Music, moreover, plays a particularly important role: hearty choral singing-- especially using the tune "There's no place like home" -- and harp playing are offered as palliatives to the director's pacifism. In this movie, the harp is a fascinatig symbol. Now I have never heard a Burmese harp, but have listened to much harp music. I wonder whether the music heard over the soundtrack could possibly be that of the instrument that we actually see: what we see is a relatively simple lyre, with no more than an octave range of strings; it undergoes considerable banging about as a result of being carried around on the shoulder, and we never hear it being properly tuned. Yet when the soldiers sing and the harp joins in, it sounds like a Healy concert harp with deep bass resonance. While I enjoyed and admired the music, I also felt that the director was manipulating the listener's emotions more than necessary.

Am I being too literal? Should I be suspending judgement and accepting the whole movie as an allegory? I wonder. When a film is shot in sharp and shadowy black and white, as if it were a documentary, and we see actual scenery and sunsets, it is difficult to suspend judgement, yet that is what the director is asking us to do.

The upshot of my reaction is that, I feel it is a film worth viewing for the forceful viewpoint of the director, but that the viewer need be forewarned that it represents a white-washed, factually romanticized, conscience of the filmmaker. On a very distant opposing scale of values, may I recommend the films of Ozu Yasujiro. His post-war films speak eloquently of the effects of war on the daily lives of people of conscience, yet without histrionics and without having to even mention the word "war" or "soldiering."

Of four **** stars, I would give it three***.

"The Burmese Harp" ("Biruma No Tategoto") (Japanese, 1956): What a powerful film. Directed by Kon Ichikawa ("Fires on the Plain"), this story is set during the last days of WWII, in Burma, with a troop of Japanese soldiers. They are weary, confused, but very bonded. When they learn their country has surrendered, with mixed emotions they submit and head to a P.O.W. camp to be detained until arrangements for their fates are made. One of them volunteers to go find a die-hard troop still "dug in" and unwilling to surrender, and ask them to give up, lest they be destroyed by who are now the victors. Thus begins his journey of spiritual awakening. Think of this as the story of Siddhartha, but on a clear, human level. It is gorgeous in its black & white compositions and lighting, slightly theatrical in its scenarios, and quite emotional. "The Burmese Harp" is a unique use of WWII as the stage for larger issues. Superb.

This is one of the best-known and most impressive anti-war films – a companion piece to the same director's later, if more cynical, FIRES ON THE PLAIN (1959) – and, arguably, Ichikawa's finest. Its 1985 remake – also made by Ichikawa! – is, curiously, not mentioned at all in the interviews that accompany the movie on Criterion's exemplary DVD (though, admittedly, I haven't read the booklet).

While I usually cringe at the sentimental songs that frequently crop up in Japanese films, here, this element is actually integral to the plot: the hero – a soldier thought dead, missing or AWOL – has learnt to play the titular instrument and used to complement with music the heartfelt singing of his companions (instigated by their music-lover captain for morale-boosting purposes). Having become a monk, the soldier is staying at a Buddhist temple; at one point, while his outfit is looking for him in the vicinity, he instinctively resumes to playing the harp when they break into song…but he's determined not to return home with them (following the defeat and capitulation of the Japanese army) because of a spiritual calling by which he is to give dignified, honorary burial to the mass of dead comrades still lying around the battlefields of Burma, putrefying and at the mercy of prowling vultures. Given the importance of music in the film, Akira Ifukube contributes a powerful and memorable score.

Ichikawa had first intended to shoot the film in color, but the cumbersome equipment couldn't be carried on location – so, he stuck to black-and-white; consequently, he relied on expressive lighting to bring out all the various aspects of war such as honor, comradeship, fatigue, despair, fear of death, loneliness and, ultimately, serenity. While there are a few harrowing scenes, they're not at the forefront as they would be in the afore-mentioned FIRES ON THE PLAIN; that film was basically a character study of a private driven to madness and cannibalism by the experience of war: as I said at the beginning, this shows the other side of the coin with respect to the effect of combat on a human being – where the inherent grimness is overcome by a selfless embrace of asceticism. Incidentally, Ichikawa made a very different and less optimistic film about a monk with CONFLAGRATION (1958) – which preceded this viewing: in my review for that film, I mentioned that the director employed an interesting technique to jump from the past into the present and back again; here, we're not shown immediately what led to the hero's 'conversion' – but this is eventually shown in poignant flashback.

The film may be considered longish at 116 minutes, but the emotions driving the narrative are so strong and honest that one hardly notices it; even if most of the actors are unfamiliar, Ichikawa brings out the best in each of them and, in particular, the two protagonists: Shoji Yasui (as the soldier/monk – he had a rather brief career) and Rentaro Mikuni (as his compassionate superior officer – he appeared in such acclaimed films as KWAIDAN [1964] and VENGEANCE IS MINE [1979]). The extras are the icing on the cake: Ichikawa's interview (he died only recently and this, in fact, instigated the viewing of the film) details plenty of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and also states that, when THE BURMESE HARP won a prize at the Venice Film Festival, he wasn't even aware that it had been submitted for competition! Mikuni's interview is shorter yet quite candid: he recounts that his own war duty being still fresh in his mind, he wouldn't stand for compromises in authenticity (brought on by a tight schedule more than anything else) and, at one point, he even stalled the film for a week because of this; he also gives due credit to scriptwriter Natto Wada (the director's own wife), who was the only person allowed in the editing room and whose suggestions often led to reshoots, and ends his interview with a plea to put a stop to war once and for all!

(1956) The Burmese Harp (In Japanese with English subtitles) WAR/ SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Quite effective anti-war film with spiritual overtones which has to be seen to be believed just because it was based on an actual person, directed by Kon Ichikawa about the final days after WWII, focusing on a story about how a Japanese harp player working in part of a unit to being transformed to becoming a Burmese monk! Extremely interesting part of Japanese history reflecting upon some of the fallen soldiers of Burma and has similar emotional overtones as the film "The Killing Fields" in 1984! I have no idea how can this film lost to the simplistic film "La Strada" for "Best Foreign Language" and not intended for the ignorant!

"The Burmese Harp" is the story of a Japanese soldier who gets separated from his unit at the time of the Japanese surrender in Burma. The plot deals with his attempts to come to terms with the aftermath of the war as he journeys to rejoin his unit. The film has a powerful, if a little sentimental, anti-war message.

What makes this film unique is the beautiful music throughout. You will hear the most unusual and thrilling rendition of "Home Sweet Home" by a group of Japanese soldiers. There is other great choral singing, as well. The harp also plays a prominent part in the movie. In addition, there are some thrilling shots of the Burmese countryside and of Burmese Buddhist temples.

Well worth watching.

Biruma No Tategoto / The Burmese Harp (1956) : Brief Review -

Some War Classic To Remember! An elegy as well as an inspiration to all Japanese soldiers who lost the spirit and courage during WW 2. The Burmese Harp is far different from other war dramas made that time. If you remember 'The Bridge On The River Kwai' which released in the same year as this and became a global sensation. Then let me tell you this like a Japanese version of that film with much more hard-hitting climax. I know comparing these two films doesn't make any accurate sense but I still i did cause I want people to watch this film considering the high standard of that Hollywood flick. The Burmese Harp is nothing less, rather i would say some people might just find it better than expected standard. In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk to hide from British force. The way it ends is truly heart touching for every human being who knows the sensitivity of the situations of war, patriotism and humanity. I was tears in those last 5 minutes and i am sure everyone who will see it or have seen it would go through the same. It is a poignant elegy of surrendered mindset of Japanese soldiers but by the time it ends it becomes an inspirational chapter. That was something new in War Genre for sure. It's a big bunch of actors and all of them have done well but i personally loved Shoji Yasui the most. His Mizushima will remain with me forever. The film has many dialogues to remember, the words have power to hit you hard and teach something about humanity. Yokoyama's cinematography is fantastic. Kon Ichikawa has done tremendously well as a director. A thank you note for him for such a heart touching and progressive film with some real motive for country other than just filmmaking.

RATING - 8/10*

By - #samthebestest.

This movie did not move me nearly as much as it seems to have moved others, perhaps because it resembles in certain respects other stories about World War II survivors. I can't help wondering how I would have reacted if I'd seen it when it was originally released. I suspect I would have found it much more affecting then than I do today. To be sure, the locale is more exotic than many other war survivor movies (though one suspects it was not actually shot in Burma). The gritty black-and-white film gives it a bit of a newsreel quality. But despite the left-over bones on the landscape, it does not make for a particularly powerful antiwar statement. All it really tells us is that Japanese soldiers were people too and one of them felt a pull to a more spiritual calling which he obeyed rather than return home with his wartime comrades.

After seeing this poetically crafted anti-war film from the recent new DVD release from Criterion, I must say there are something disturbed me profoundly. The platoon led by Captain Inouye (Mikuni Rentaro) was depicted throughout the entire film more like a Boy Scout group than WWII Japanese Imperial soldiers. They enjoyed choral singing so much as if they weren't aware that they were battling with the British army in the tropical Burmese jungle during the final days of WWII. The film never dropped any slightest hint of any suffering or hardship of the local Burmese people because of the war brought onto their land by the Japanese and British. The film concentrated on the main character, the harp-playing soldier Mizushima's spiritual awakening while disguised as a Burmese monk fleeing alone from a deadly battle in the mountain to join up his platoon which have already surrendered and been taken as war prisoners by the British army. The film showed several times how Mizushima was shocked and horrified upon seeing dead bodies of his fellow Japanese soldiers scattered in a raven, along a river bank or in the jungle. But the film never showed even once any casualty or suffering of any Burmese people, which made it appeared as if the Burmese people during the war were nothing but a bunch of on-lookers. The story in this film seemed to tell us that Mizushima's transformation from a soldier to a Buddhist monk was solely because he saw many dead bodies of his fellow Japanese soldiers but not because he saw the mass killings on ALL SIDES, including the death of innocent civilians. Ichikawa Kon's film had an admirable anti-war intention and message, but unfortunately it appeared it laden with the ever subtle message that says "We Japanese soldiers are good people, we never really want to do harms to others, we suffered and died just like any other war victims." Some people may think this film has a clear Buddhist teaching in it, but the way I see it, it's not a pure Buddhist altruism because I can smell the 'nationalism' hidden behind that harp.