H199 Prompt for Short Response paper (3-4 pp) on The Harp of Burma (Due Mar. 7)
A critic notes that The Harp of Burma has "Variously been described as an antiwar film, an adult fairy tale, a religious odyssey of enlightenment, a sentimental war drama, a kind of penance for the senseless loss of human life at the hands of Japan's militarists. In fact it's all these things."
How does this characterization sound to you? What strikes you as most interesting or compelling thing about this film? How would you describe or explain Mizushima's decision to remain in Burma and attend to Japanese war dead? What do you think the film has to say about War and Japan's military adventurism?
Some critics have wondered if director ICHIKAWA Kon didn't overly sentimentalize Japan's role in Southeast Asia by not depicting the harshness and cruelty of its military occupation. How successfully do you think the film functions as a critique of the War and the ideology of Japan's Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere that drove Japan to be in Burma in the first place?
Here are two links that might be useful to draw upon when writing this paper.
1. The first includes quotes from both the film and the novel which you should feel free to use even though the novel was not assigned.
2. And this second page specifically addresses this question of how effectively the film operates as a critique of Japanese militarism and its decision to invade other countries and cause "terrible suffering to [their] people." You could explore what the film does and does not do.
You should find ample material here to help you critically reflect on the film.
Due Mar. 7