The Burmese Harp

is a 1956 Japanese drama film directed by Kon Ichikawa. Based on a children's novel of the same name written by Michio Takeyama, it tells the story of Japanese soldiers who fought in the Burma Campaign during World War II. A member of the group goes missing after the war, and the soldiers hope to uncover whether their friend survived, and if he is the same person as a Buddhist monk they see playing a harp. The film was among the first to show the losses of the war from a Japanese soldier's perspective. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1956. In 1985, Ichikawa remade The Burmese Harp in color with a new cast, and the remake was a major box office success, becoming the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1985 and the second largest Japanese box office hit up to that time. Plot Private Mizushima, a Japanese soldier, becomes the harp (or saung) player of Captain Inouye's group, composed of soldiers who fight and sing to raise morale in the World War II Burma Campaign. When they are offered shelter in a village, they eventually realize they are being watched by British and Indian soldiers. They retrieve their ammunition, then see the advancing force. Captain Inouye tells the men to sing, laugh and clap, to give the British the impression that they are unaware of their presence. Instead of firing at them, though, the British soldiers begin singing the same melody, "Home! Sweet Home!". Inouye's men learn that the war has ended with the Japanese surrender, and so they surrender to the British. At a camp, a British captain asks Mizushima to talk down a group of soldiers who are still fighting on a mountain. He agrees to do so and is told by the captain that he has 30 minutes to convince them to surrender. At the mountain, he is almost shot by the hold-out soldiers before they realize he is Japanese. He climbs up to the cave and informs their commander that the war has ended and they should surrender. The commander confers with the other soldiers, and they unanimously decide to fight to the end. Mizushima begs for them to surrender but they do nothing. He decides to ask for more time from the British, but when he creates a surrender flag, the others take it the wrong way and believe he is surrendering for them. They beat him unconscious and leave him on the floor. The cave is bombarded and Mizushima is the only survivor.