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The Burmese Harp is a beautiful and unusual film about Buddhism, music and the aftermath of war. Many others have reviewed this 1956 Japanese release, in which director Kon Ichikawa depicts the struggle of Japanese soldiers in Burma to come to terms with their defeat--my purpose here is to discuss the role of music in the film, as well as a broader point about colonialism.

The story centers on a platoon of soldiers who have kept their sprits up during the long retreat across Burma by singing. They are accompanied by Private Mizushima (Rentaro Mikuni), a self-taught player of the Burmese harp. Unlike the stiff-lipped Allies in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, these soon-to-be POWs don't whistle jolly tunes--they sing songs full of loneliness and nostalgia in beautiful choral harmonies, set to Mizushima's elegant harp arrangements.

There is a strange disconnect between sound and image in the film's many musical scenes. The beautifully framed cinematography was shot on location, realistically depicting dead bodies strewn across Burma's serene landscapes. The music, however, is recorded in the studio, with seemingly no similar effort toward verisimilitude: the soldiers' singing is pitch perfect and the harp parts, obviously played on a western harp, utilize a wide range and chromatic pitches not found on the Burmese harp. Moreover, the sound of the harp often projects through jungle and stone walls and across fields in an utterly unrealistic manner. Rather than seeming corny or old-fashioned, this treatment of sound serves to amplify one of Ichikawa's themes--that music unites, transcends, heals and ties together.

In an early scene, the platoon, feigning obliviousness to an impending Allied attack, starts singing what they think of as a Japanese song. Soon they are joined in singing by the opposing forces, who sing the song's English version: "There's No Place Like Home." It turns out that the war has already ended and a needless and bloody confrontation has been averted by a song whose melody and homeward-yearning sentiment transcend nationality and enmity.

Mizushima is soon separated from his fellows and nearly killed. Stealing a Buddhist monk's robes in order to disguise himself, he treks toward the camp where his platoon is interred. However, the scenes of carnage that greet him at every turn profoundly affect him, and the quest for physical survival becomes a quest for spiritual survival. Eventually, he reunites with the other Japanese only to play them a musical goodbye on the harp. The disguise has become reality--when they return to Japan, he will stay behind in "Buddha's land" as a monk.

More than any piece of writing or film-making I have encountered, The Burmese Harp gives a sense of the soul searching that must have taken place in Japan after WWII. Shot eleven years after the war's end, it reveals both the depths and limits of that search. In this film, music is a stand-in for the goodness in the soldier's heart, and Mizushima represents the Japanese realization of war's futility and brutality. However, it is telling that the warrior-turned-monk makes it his mission not to make reparations toward the Burmese people he helped oppress, but rather to save the bodies of Japanese soldiers from Burmese vultures.

Just as in many Hollywood films set in Asia, in Ichikawa's film Burma is merely the backdrop for the colonialist's quest--be that quest "good" or "evil." The song of Japan floats over the Burmese landscape in a grand chorus; the music of Burma is scarcely heard at all.