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ビルマの竪琴 [Biruma no tategoto / The Burmese Harp] (Kon Ichikawa, 1956)
Apr
8
花祭り
Mizushima (Shōji Yasui) holding his harp, looked over by the reclining Buddha. DP: Minoru Yokoyama.
A film about Buddhism, or set in Japan, in honour of the birth of Buddha, celebrated in Japan on April 8 as 花祭り (Hana Matsuri, aka Flower Festival)
“Can't you see that whatever you do is futile? The armies of Britain and Japan can come and fight all they wish. Burma is still Burma. Burma is the Buddha's country.”
– old monk
While stationed in Burma, Mizushima disguises himself as a dhutanga, a wandering Buddhist monk, burying the remains of his fellow Japanese soldiers.
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飼育 [Shiiku / The Catch] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1961)
Dec
26
offerings
An altar with two rotund, smiling stone statues – possibly Jizō, a bowl of rice with chopsticks stuck into it, and a Japanese soldier's photograph. The position of the chopsticks tells us that the soldier has died. DP: Yoshitsugu Tonegawa.
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飼育 [Shiiku / The Catch] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1961)
Feb
2
National Catchers Day
The nameless soldier (Hugh Hurd) in the barn. Another person is with him. The soldier looks away, at something offscreen. DP: Yoshitsugu Tonegawa.
In the summer of 1945, the people of a small Japanese village find a Black American helicopter pilot in one of their traps and lock him in the communal storeroom. While the war continues and the villagers wait for orders from above, the man – for the townspeople, his presence, this allegory – becomes something else.
“Your keeping this animal has meant all of us suffer!”
飼育 shares more than a few themes with Đorđe Kadijević's Празник from 1967. The war's the same, any war is, and the Chetniks too capture a Black American pilot. Again, the villagers seem to share a folie, a madness, rooted in an unshaken belief – call it tradition or shared illusions foolishness or hope.
