Film Review: The Burmese Harp

The Burmese Harp. Directed by Kon Ichikawa. Starring Rentaro Mikuni and Shoji Yasui. Based on a novel by Michio Takeyama. (1956)

Little Known AntiWar Film is a Classic

This 1956 Japanese film is a profoundly moving meditation on the price of war and may well rank in the top pantheon of anti-war films.  It is in black and white and this sharp chiaroscuro increases its impact and quiet power.  It takes place in Burma as World War II  is ending in July  1945.  The first words on the screen are: “The soil of Burma is red and so are its rocks,” thus introducing a metaphor for what is to follow.

Using Music and Song to Touch the Heart

The camera focuses on a unit of Japanese soldiers, whose captain graduated from music school and has taught them the basics of choral singing.  One of them, Corporal Mizushima, has learned to play the Burmese harp and accompanies his comrades as they sing.  They long to escape to Thailand but it is too late.

Resting in a Burmese village one night, they sing of home. In the distance British troops, recognizing the tune, join in the singing.  The sound of men singing in unison of their longing for home  is moving beyond words.   They surrender to the British and discover that the war ended three days before.  Jubilation! They have survived. They will be repatriated and return home soon.

Confronting the Costs of War Face to Face

The British ask their help in persuading a rogue troop of Japanese soldiers holding out in a mountain cave to surrender.  Corporal Mizushima volunteers for this task.  The holdouts refuse to believe that Japan has surrendered. In the ensuing attack Mizushima is wounded and separated from his unit. 

Dazed, the corporal wanders through the war-strewn countryside. Everywhere he goes he finds the bodies and skeletons of dead Japanese soldiers.  They lie in the grotesque postures in which they died, bodies swelling in the heat-and to Mizushima’s eyes-dishonored.  When his clothes are stolen he disguises himself as a wandering Buddhist monk. He stops to burn and bury the corpses.  His unit, meanwhile, becomes obsessed with finding Mizushima who with his harp,was the heart and soul of his unit. They do not want to return to Japan without him.

Honoring the Dead and Honoring Life Itself

Offered the chance to return home, Mizushima refuses. Instead he takes on vows and becomes a full Buddhist monk. His life has a purpose now:  to bury the comrades who lie dead, turning the soil and rocks of Burma red with their blood, and one knows, to become a force for peace. 

This film movies slowly and quietly, haunted by the exquisite tones of the Burmese harp.  There is extraordinary beauty here, from the music  and the singing, but most of all the love of these men for each other.  Perhaps it takes the horrific loss and ugliness of war for human beings to grasp the tender majesty that is the gift of life itself. 

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