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Scenes from director Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp, which will be part of the "Real to Real: Buddhism and Film" series presented by Asian Art Museum’s Chong-Moon Lee Center and the San Francisco Zen Center. Photo courtesy of David Hyry and Associates.

Real to Real

By Justin Lowe

At the advanced age of 86, Japanese director Kon Ichikawa may be experiencing something of a renaissance. Having outlasted contemporaries that include the late Akira Kurosawa, the late Masaki Kobayashi and the late Yasujiro Ozu, Ichikawa’s output of more than 80 films seems ripe for reappraisal. A new collection of essays by international scholars and critics (titled Kon Ichikawa) reexamines his career in conjunction with a North American retrospective of his films. And Ichikawa’s most recent release, the 1999 feature Dora Heita, a sly, ironic reworking of the samurai genre (originally co-written in 1969 with Kurosawa, Kobayashi and Keisuke Kinoshita) has been touring the international festival circuit to favorable response.

Widely acknowledged as one of Japan’s leading postwar directors, Ichikawa’s long and varied career has included comedies, dramas, mysteries and documentaries. In conjunction with the series Real to Real: Buddhism and Film, the San Francisco Zen Center and the Asian Art Museum’s Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture are presenting The Burmese Harp, among Ichikawa’s most popular films. The series is a showcase for Buddhist-influenced films from Asia, Europe and the U.S. that brings together varied audiences for the cross-cultural exploration of Buddhism. Semimonthly screenings continue through September, accompanied by lectures from well-known authors, critics and Buddhist scholars. While some selections seem rather far-fetched, considering the theme (Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue, Ground Hog Day by Harold Ramis), others offer an excellent opportunity to evaluate Buddhism’s representation in, and influence on, popular film.

Upcoming screenings include Himalaya (AW 3/30/01), Eric Valli’s beautifully filmed feature about traditional culture and inter-generational rivalry on a yak caravan trek through the mountains of Nepal; Monkey Makes Havoc by Huang Tang, the animated adventure of a Chinese Buddhist priest’s pilgrimage to India, based on the novel Journey to the West (presented by Maxine Hong Kingston); and Afterlife, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s comic fantasy of the post-death experience.

Photo courtesy of David Hyry and Associates.

Among Ichikawa’s few films widely and consistently exhibited in the West, The Burmese Harp (1956) is an anti-war drama of outstanding humanism, set in Burma as World War II is ending in 1945. Corporal Yasuhiko Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) is a scout and translator for his unit, under the command of the musically inclined Captain Inoue (Rentaro Mikuni). It’s a time of desperation and despair as the troops march back towards the Thai border in an effort to escape advancing British forces. At the captain’s behest, Mizushima entertains his comrades on a traditional Burmese harp in an effort to encourage them, but the group is forced to surrender to the Allies when the war concludes.

As his unit prepares for relocation to a POW camp, Mizushima is summoned by Captain Inoue to assist the British with a delicate mission: convincing a troop of Japanese soldiers holed up on a mountaintop that the war is over and they should surrender. The corporal accepts the assignment, expecting to be reunited with his comrades within a week, but the fanatical hold-outs refuse to give up and most are killed in a subsequent British shelling. Badly wounded, Mizushima is rescued by a Buddhist priest, who cares for the soldier during his brief recovery. Repaying the monk’s kindness with deception, Mizushima disguises himself with the priest’s robes in an attempt to rejoin his unit.

But Mizushima experiences a curious transformation during his journey, as if the monastic robes have conferred him with a new persona, indicative of his second chance at life. Encountering scores of dead Japanese soldiers on his solitary march, Mizushima spontaneously decides to bury them while passing through the war-ravaged landscape. As he approaches the POW camp and reunion with his unit, Mizushima must decide whether to join them for their repatriation to Japan or accept the “terrible loneliness” of his new-found calling as a wandering penitent.

Ichikawa’s choice of setting contribute to a pervasive melancholy throughout The Burmese Harp. By situating the story at the conclusion of the war, rather than depicting a series of bloody battles, he emphasizes the futility of conflict, the universality of suffering and the inescapability of fate. This tone is heightened by the frequent introduction of traditional music and sentimental popular song, often performed in chorus by the Japanese troops or played on the harp by Mizushima. In particular, the haunting refrain of “Home Sweet Home” unites the Japanese and British troops in their forced exile, and comments on the war’s devastation of the Burmese people and countryside.

Shooting on location in Burma, Ichikawa frequently frames the protagonist in vast mountain landscapes or engulfed in jungle foliage, simultaneously emphasizing both his isolation and his connectedness with the sentient world. Numerous sequences without dialog enable the director to convey Mizushima’s separation from his previous life as he assumes a new identity and vocation. The script, by Ichikawa’s collaborator and wife Natto Wada (based on Michio Takeyama’s 1946 novel), occasionally verges on sentimentality, but avoids the overly maudlin by maintaining an authenticity of character and tone too often exaggerated as self-righteousness in other anti-war films. Even after 45 years, The Burmese Harp remains a masterful testament to pacifism and the universal power of compassion.