The Burmese Harp (1956 film)

The Burmese Harp
Directed by	Kon Ichikawa
Screenplay by	Natto Wada
Based on	The Burmese Harp by Michio Takeyama
Produced by	Masayuki Takagi
Starring	Rentarō Mikuni, Shôji Yasui, Jun Hamamura
Cinematography	Minoru Yokoyama
Edited by	Masanori Tsujii
Music by	Akira Ifukube
Production company	Nikkatsu
Distributed by	Nikkatsu
Release dates	29 January 1956 (1956-01-29) (Part I) 12 February 1956 (1956-02-12) (Part II)[1]
Running time	143 minutes (Japan) 116 minutes (International)
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Box office	$30,792[2]

The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴, Biruma no Tategoto, a.k.a. Harp of Burma) 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.