The Burmese Harp | |
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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 | |
Distributed by | Nikkatsu |
Release dates |
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Running time | 143 minutes (Japan) 116 minutes (International) |
Country | Japan |
Language | Japanese |
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.