# The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴)
**The Burmese Harp** (ビルマの竪琴, *Biruma no Tategoto*) is a 1956 Japanese antiwar drama directed by [Kon Ichikawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/kon-ichikawa), adapted by Natto Wada from Michio Takeyama's novel, about a Japanese soldier in Burma who, after the war ends, takes a Buddhist monk's robes and stays behind to bury the dead rather than return home.[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/10065) Produced by Nikkatsu, it was Ichikawa's first major critical and commercial success in Japan and his first film shown abroad, winning the San Giorgio Prize at the 17th Venice International Film Festival and earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) • [3](https://jfdb.jp/title/10065)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / screenwriter | Kon Ichikawa; screenplay by Natto Wada (Ichikawa's wife), from the novel by Michio Takeyama[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/10065) |
| Studio / release | Nikkatsu; Part 1 (63 min) opened January 21, 1956, Part 2 (80 min) opened February 12, 1956; combined and cut from 143 to 116 minutes for rerelease and export[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) |
| Principal cast | Rentaro Mikuni as Captain Inouye, Shoji Yasui as Private Mizushima, Tanie Kitabayashi as the old woman trader, Tatsuya Mihashi as the defense commander[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/817-the-burmese-harp) |
| Music / photography | Score by Akira Ifukube; cinematography by Minoru Yokoyama; black and white, 1.37:1[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/10065) • [4](https://www.criterion.com/films/817-the-burmese-harp) |
| Honors | San Giorgio Prize, 17th Venice International Film Festival; Academy Award nomination, Best Foreign Language Film; fifth place on Kinema Junpo's annual Best Ten list[3](https://jfdb.jp/title/10065) • [2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) |
| Remake | Ichikawa remade the film in color in 1985, financed by Fuji TV after Toho declined; it was the top-grossing Japanese film of 1985[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
In the summer of 1945, a depleted Japanese unit under Captain Inouye is retreating across Burma toward Thailand. Inouye, drafted from a music school, leads his men in choral singing, and Private Mizushima accompanies them on a homemade instrument modeled on the Burmese harp; he also disguises himself as a local to carry out scouting missions, using the harp's sound as a signal to move the platoon safely.[5](https://eiga.com/movie/39111/)
After the unit learns of Japan's defeat and surrenders, it is sent to a prisoner-of-war camp at Mudon. Mizushima is sent alone to persuade a Japanese unit still holding out on a mountain to accept the war's end; his persuasion fails, the unit is annihilated, and Mizushima disappears.[6](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20095.html) Later, at the camp, the platoon passes a monk who looks exactly like Mizushima. He is Mizushima: after being wounded and left for dead, he was nursed back to health by a Buddhist monk, and seeing the unburied bones of Japanese soldiers abandoned across the countryside, he resolved to remain in Burma as a monk and console the spirits of the dead.[6](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20095.html) In the book's frame, the story is told by an unnamed returned soldier, and Mizushima's fate is revealed only when Captain Inouye reads a long letter from him aboard the ship home.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers)
## The source novel
Takeyama Michio (1903–84) was a professor of [German literature](https://www.edgepedia.org/german-literature) in Tokyo who had never set foot in Burma and never had another popular success. He wrote the story in 1946 at the request of the children's magazine *Aka tombo*; the first installment was delayed by occupation-era censorship, which ordered partial deletions of war scenes, and the serial ran intermittently through 1948. Although aimed at young readers, the story was immediately embraced by adults, and the book edition became a long-term best seller, continuously in print since serialization.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) • [7](https://www.nikkatsu.com/focus/vol29.html) The book won the second Mainichi Publishing Culture Award and the Minister of Education Award for the Arts in 1948.[8](https://www.shinchosha.co.jp/book/107801/)
Takeyama's stated aim was to contribute to the healing of the war's wounds. His central idea, in critic Tony Rayns's summary, is that music is a salve for the soul: its combat uses, sending coded signals and keeping up morale, are trumped by its capacity to build bridges between opponents. The film's famous scene in which Japanese and British soldiers sing the same song rests on Takeyama's discovery that the Japanese song "Hanyu no yado" is a version of the English folk song "Home, Sweet Home."[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers)
## Production
Ichikawa lobbied hard to make the film. He had moved from Toho to Nikkatsu in 1955 specifically because producer Masayuki Takagi held the adaptation rights, telling the *Hochi Shimbun* that he had been warming to the project for four years.[7](https://www.nikkatsu.com/focus/vol29.html) Nikkatsu had originally assigned the film to the veteran Tasaka Tomotaka, who had made the two best-known films about Japanese soldiers' wartime suffering, *Five Scouts* (1938) and *Mud and Soldiers* (1939); when Tasaka fell ill, the comparatively unknown Ichikawa got the project. An earlier adaptation by Tasaka at Shintoho, prepared between 1950 and 1952, was never filmed and survives only as a script.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) • [7](https://www.nikkatsu.com/focus/vol29.html)
**Color abandoned.** The film was originally planned in color, but Nikkatsu's Konicolor process required a three-strip camera so large that transporting it to Burma would have been too expensive and risky. Ichikawa instead shot in black and white at Japanese locations, including Hakone and the Izu peninsula, and worked to convey tropical heat through composition and framing.[9](https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/27001/burmese-harp-criterion-collection-the/) Nikkatsu's own records list overseas location work in Myanmar, at Yangon and Moulmein, alongside Japanese locations in Kanagawa, Shizuoka, and elsewhere.[6](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20095.html)
Ichikawa and Wada changed the novel's structure. Where Takeyama sticks to his narrator's point of view and reveals Mizushima's vocation only in the final letter, the film provides a lengthy flashback much earlier and shows the encounter between Mizushima-as-monk and his former comrades twice, once from each party's point of view. Ichikawa also dropped the book's episode in which Mizushima is nursed by a tribe of cannibals, replacing it with rescue by a Buddhist monk who intones "Burma is Burma. Burma is the Buddha's country."[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers)
## Reception and honors
The film was a success in Japan and abroad. It ranked fifth on Kinema Junpo's yearly Best Ten list, becoming the first Ichikawa film to make that list, and also his first film screened abroad; at the 1956 [Venice Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/venice-film-festival) it took home the San Giorgio Prize, and rights to distribute it were sold across much of the West. The Japanese press began taking Ichikawa seriously, and studios gave him more leeway in choosing projects afterward.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) It was also nominated for the 29th Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.[3](https://jfdb.jp/title/10065)
Critics have continued to rank it among the major Japanese antiwar films. Criterion calls it an eloquent meditation on beauty coexisting with death, tender and brutal in its grappling with Japan's wartime legacy.[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/817-the-burmese-harp) Others have been cooler: Dave Kehr of the *Chicago Reader* wrote that by today's standards it can appear uncomfortably didactic, and *The New York Times* called it earnest but circuitous and overstated.[10](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-burmese-harp/critic-reviews/)
## Criticism and afterlife
The film has drawn sustained criticism for its treatment of Burma and Buddhism. In Burmese Theravada (oldest surviving school of Buddhism) tradition, monks are barred from playing musical instruments, so a monk playing the harp reads as a broken-vow monk, and the 1956 film was banned from screening in Burma on that ground.[11](https://eiga.com/movie/68212/review/04822088/) The scholar Kei Nemoto, professor emeritus of [Sophia University](https://www.edgepedia.org/sophia-university), has argued that the work shows no understanding of Theravada Buddhism, treats Burmese people as decorative background, ignores the suffering the Japanese occupation caused, and omits the 1945 anti-Japanese uprising in which thousands of Japanese soldiers were killed; he has also noted that the 1985 remake was shot entirely in Thailand, with Thai-style pagodas and monastic robes standing in for Burmese ones.[12](https://webmagazin-amor.jp/2024/07/20/tokushu93_1/)
**The 1985 remake.** Ichikawa remade the film in color in 1985, using the same script by Wada, who had died in 1983, and again casting Tanie Kitabayashi as the old woman trader. Financed by Fuji TV after Toho turned it down, the remake was influenced in tone by Nagisa Oshima's *Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence* (1983), ran 133 minutes, and became the top-grossing Japanese film of 1985, though it did not repeat the original's international success.[2](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers) • [13](https://cinemasojourns.com/2020/09/17/balm-for-the-soul/)
The 1956 film has remained in circulation. [The Criterion Collection](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-criterion-collection) released it on DVD in 2007 and a new 4K restoration on 4K UHD and Blu-ray in 2025; Nikkatsu issued its own 4K restoration of the combined version on UHD Blu-ray in August 2025, marking the 80th anniversary of the war's end.[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/817-the-burmese-harp) • [7](https://www.nikkatsu.com/focus/vol29.html)
## References
1. [The Burmese Harp (Soshuhen), Japanese Film Database (JFDB)](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/10065)
2. [Tony Rayns, "The Burmese Harp: Unknown Soldiers," The Criterion Collection (2007)](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/472-the-burmese-harp-unknown-soldiers)
3. [ビルマの竪琴 総集篇, JFDB](https://jfdb.jp/title/10065)
4. [The Burmese Harp, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/817-the-burmese-harp)
5. [ビルマの竪琴（1956）作品情報, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/39111/)
6. [ビルマの竪琴 総集篇, 日活](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20095.html)
7. [vol.29 幻の『ビルマの竪琴』をめぐって, 日活フォーカス (2025)](https://www.nikkatsu.com/focus/vol29.html)
8. [『ビルマの竪琴』竹山道雄, 新潮社](https://www.shinchosha.co.jp/book/107801/)
9. [The Burmese Harp Blu-ray review, DVD Talk (2007)](https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/27001/burmese-harp-criterion-collection-the/)
10. [The Burmese Harp critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-burmese-harp/critic-reviews/)
11. [ビルマの竪琴（1985）レビュー, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/68212/review/04822088/)
12. [根本敬「『ビルマの竪琴（たてごと）』から卒業しよう！」AMOR (2024)](https://webmagazin-amor.jp/2024/07/20/tokushu93_1/)
13. [Balm for the Soul, Cinema Sojourns (2020)](https://cinemasojourns.com/2020/09/17/balm-for-the-soul/)
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*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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