dir: Ichikawa Kon – Japanese film

Finding the Light: A Post-War Ethical Dilemma

Ichikawa Kon’s 1956 The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto/Harp of Burma) is a visceral and aesthetic powerhouse. Based on the children’s novel penned by Takeyama Michio, the film presents a unique Japanese perspective on the post-World War II reparations and the subsequent trauma faced by the soldiers caught between honour, justice, and a personal sense of conviction. It is a work representative of “his acerbic account of tradition, modernization and alienation in twentieth century Japan” (Jacoby, 3). Mizushima Yasuhiko (Yasui Shoji) propels this anti-war gendai-geki, as he and his platoon, comprised in part by Captain Inouye (Mikuni Rentarō), Ito (Hamamura Jun), Kobayashi (Neito Taketoshi), and Baba (Nishimura Ko), deal with the ramifications of the Japanese surrender to the Allied Powers. Mizushima is commissioned with the task of bringing news of the surrender to the last-standing platoon, still embroiled in gunfire with the British troops. His words are met by a fierce nationalistic sentiment, and the very troops he came to save in Triangle Mountains are shot down by enemy fire in the uproar.

In a harrowing sequence, Mizushima is confronted with the senselessness and despair of war, as he journeys to rejoin his team who are awaiting repatriation. Ichikawa’s protagonist is faced with the moral dilemma of whether to adopt the ways of the Buddhist monks and ensure the honourable burial of each of his fallen comrades, or to let the fallen lie as collateral in both the aftermath of the war, and the survivors’ opportunity to return home to Japan.

Ichikawa navigates the divides between each ideology, oppositionary forces and disparate languages, through the universal conduit of music. It is used not only to communicate what characters are unable to articulate, but is also employed as a vehicle to convey emotional states of being. This mastery is woven throughout key vantage points in the narrative, such as the choral exchange between the Allied Powers and the Japanese through the song popular with Western audiences as “Home Sweet Home,” and “Hanyu no yado” to Japanese viewers of the film. In other examples embedded in the film, the platoon attempts to utilize song to entice Mizushima back to the POW camp, who in turn uses his traditional harp to return his own salutations, sentiments, and sorrows.

Another distinct aspect of Ichikawa’s work is his characteristic use of light and highly aesthetic camerawork. His prior aspirations to pursue a career a painting are clearly evident in his deft use of contrast between light and dark against a black-and-white film stock. The director exploits light to both delineate the protagonist and opposing forces, as well as to characterize and personify internal states of emotion for each party. This can be seen in the emotion conveyed as Mizushima awakes entombed by the corpses of the Triangle Mountain troops, in a scene indicative of the chiaroscuro seen in Renaissance artworks depicting hills of fallen souls. The subtext of scenes where Captain Inouye and his men are imprisoned is in the POW, is also masterfully conveyed through the use of slanted light, that beams through the panels of the bamboo outhouse, casting reflections of prison bars onto the faces of the platoon.

Charged emotion is also depicted through the vast empty spaces of the striking Burmese landscape, captured by Ichikawa’s telephoto lens and long shots. The landscape ‘speaks’ of the despair and emptiness that weighs on Mizushima, and provides voice to both the ghosts of the fallen soldiers that he faces, as well as the struggle he fights internally. Evidence of this struggle can be seen in the wide angle close-ups such as the rack focus between the anguish of Mizushima, and the parrot that sits on his shoulder: the embodiment of his friend’s wishes for him to come home.

Though some violent imagery may be unsuitable for younger audiences, Ichikawa Kon has taken the storytelling devices of light, camerawork, subtext and mise-en-scéne, and transformed a child’s fantasy about the ethics of war, into an honest and emotional depiction of survival against post-traumatic stress. His work provides his audience a vehicle through Mizushima, to find meaning and reason in the deafening silence after the last gunshot is fired. “To have the courage, to face suffering, senselessness and irrationality without fear, to find strength to create peace by one’s own example” (Ichikawa).

Works Cited

Jacoby, Alexander. “Kon Ichikawa.” Senses of Cinema March 2004

“Fires on the Plain”

Fires on the Plain was released in 1959, directed by Ichikawa Kon, and based on Ōka Shohei’s novel Nobi. The leading male actor is Funakoshi Eiji and there is no leading female actor in this movie because it is a Second World War II story through the eye of the leading male actor. The original movie is 106 minutes long in black and white yet there is no remade version of it.

The movie is about the personal experience of a Japanese soldier, Tamura, who is expelled from his squad because there is not enough food for everyone and his leader tells him to stay in the hospital for a longer period. On the way to the hospital, he sees smokes for a few times and he runs away instantly because he is afraid it is a signal for the American army to attack the place. When he arrives at the hospital, the commander asks him to leave since he only took people who were about to die. The Japanese soldiers can go nowhere except Palompon where they will be evacuated. At the same time, the American army keeps firing at them. Everyone is hungry and tired so they eat whatever they could find and sleep anywhere on the way to Palompon. They keep walking and a lot of them either fall down or are dead. Tamura finally meets his friends, but they practise cannibalism which is a human being eating another human being’s flesh. Therefore, Tamura kills them and runs to the field where there was smoke.

One theme of the movie is humanity which is the act of being kind to others. The soldiers who were abandoned and left behind in the Philippines are hungry and they have insufficient weapons to fight against their enemies. However, the Emperor’s allies do not send more troops to help them. In other words, they can only fight to the death since it is merely impossible to make it to Palompon. Firstly, there are airplanes, tanks and vehicles moving around the city to look for the Japanese soldiers so they have no way to escape. Secondly, they do not have enough food to maintain their daily needs; they will die of hunger in the end. Thirdly, the Filipinos will kill them if they see the Japanese soldiers. As a result, the soldiers can not hide anywhere. Perhaps there were many difficulties in the Japan mainland so he could not help his citizens abroad. However, the government puts its people in danger (started the war) first, it should evacuate as many soldiers back to Japan as possible. Another main aspect of humanity is cannibalism. Tamura’s comrades kill other living humans for food and they refer to those to “monkeys”. When one person faces the problems of insufficient food, what should he choose to keep him alive? Tamura eats grass and leeches so he has no energy. His comrades eat flesh because either they die, or others do. So they choose to sacrifice others. Near the end of the movie, there is a Buddhist follower who eats mud as food and he said “I can’t make the forest.” I believe forest here means lives. There are many species, fruits and trees in the forest that humans can make use of. Once the forest is destroyed, myriads of lives end.

The main character Tamura’s personality gradually changes throughout the movie. He treats every life as valuable even Filipinos. When he saw the Filipino girl who screams when she sees him, he is trying to drop his gun but he kills her since the girl cannot stop screaming. It seems that others will notice his existence so he has to shoot at her to close her mouth. When she is dead, he fixes her clothing and makes her look neat. From this action, I can tell that he feels sorry to her. At the beginning, he hides whenever he sees the smoke from a field. After he knows the reason that farmers burned the field, he runs to the field although the probability of keeping himself safe is low. “I know it is dangerous, but I want to see people who are leading a normal life”. Tamura is scared of death; he tries his best to get to the evacuation area. However, he is brave to run to the smoke field because he wants to live as a normal human being. He does not want to be someone who eats human flesh. He does not eat any of the dead bodies he saw on the way to Palompon. All the things he does show that he wants to live as a normal person in a peaceful society. He is not afraid of death but he is aiming for a normal life.

I like this film a lot as it changes some of my old views toward Japanese of the WWII period. I am Chinese; I learned that Japanese invaded many countries. I still remember there are many documents about how cruel the Japanese treated Chinese men, women and even children. As a reason, I thought Japanese soldiers were all cold-blooded. However, I see that Tamura has no real intention to kill anybody in the film and he disagrees with cannibalism no matter how hungry he is. From my perspective, maybe it was just the government’s decision to invade other countries yet many of the Japanese soldiers had to follow the central orders. So I do not think they are as bad as I thought. Thus I will recommend this movie to people who dislike the Japanese; it will change your perceptions.