Japan
1956
116 minutes
Black and White
1.33:1
Japanese
379
An Imperial Japanese Army regiment surrenders to British forces in Burma at the close of World War II and finds harmony through song. A private, thought to be dead, disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and stumbles upon spiritual enlightenment. Magnificently shot in hushed black and white, Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp is an eloquent meditation on beauty coexisting with death and remains one of Japanese cinema’s most overwhelming antiwar statements, both tender and brutal in its grappling with Japan’s wartime legacy.
| Captain Inouye | Rentaro Mikuni |
| Private Mizushima | Shoji Yasui |
| Nippon woman | Taniye Kitabayashi |
| Defense commander | Tatsuya Mihashi |
| Village head | Yunosuke Ito |
| Director | Kon Ichikawa |
| Producer | Masayuki Takaki |
| Original story | Michio Takeyama |
| Screenplay | Natto Wada |
| Cinematography | Minoru Yokoyama |
| Lighting | Ko Fujibayashi |
| Sound | Masakazu Kamiya |
| Music | Akira Ifukube |
| Editing | Masanori Tsuji |
The Burmese Harp was the forty-one-year-old Ichikawa Kon’s twenty-seventh feature, and the first real landmark in his career. He had entered the film industry as an animator (his first film was a twenty-minute puppet short), but switched to live action the moment he had the chance . . .
In beautifully composed black-and-white, lilting easily from sweeping landscape to emotional close-up, and tempered by a gentle and nostalgic choral score, director Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp probes deeply into the moral chaos of war. Following the actions of a young Japanese officer . . .
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