Director Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp is without a doubt an antiwar movie, but that is not the main message of the film. Ichikawa does not shock us with violent and gory deaths as other war movies might, although we are shown some brief action. At this point, Japan has surrendered and most of WWII’s battles are past save for Triangle Mountain. We are shown the Japanese soldiers being taken out by the British soldiers, but the scene goes by quickly. We know that most of the soldiers were killed, but the battle scene lacks the intensity of battles such as the opening of Saving Private Ryan, for example. If anything, showing the conversation between soldier and harpist Mizushima and the soldiers he is trying to convince to surrender, is the stronger criticism. The soldiers are espousing a belief that they, given by their glances to the commander as they answer, do not truly believe in themselves. They will die for what they think might be the honorable thing to do. Ichikawa communicates much more through conversation and gestures.
As can be seen above, the soldiers are clearly dead, but the details are obscured by shadows and the bodies being piled together. Furthermore, when Mizushima discovers the bodies, Ichikawa uses music and Mizushima’s reaction to affect the audience rather than gory details. That is not to say Ichikawa lacks powerful emotion, far from it, just that he uses it elsewhere. It is melancholy and poignant when we see the many soldiers who have been died and left unburied, but the strongest emotions come from the soldiers trying to get Mizushima to come home with them. The singing scenes are by far the most moving scenes in the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmJ_z50LHXc
Through singing, the soldiers keep their spirits up in the face of a less dire, but strong side effect of war, homesickness. In the video clip above, it is one of the first songs we hear in the film. It effectively communicates the nostalgia every one of the soldiers must feel and some of what they have given up for their countries. The song is used again later and it becomes even more powerful as we grow to know Mizushima better. As the soldiers sing and call to Mizushima to come home with them, we feel frustrated and distressed knowing that Mizushima has already made his decision and just how much he is sacrificing for the passed on soldiers. Overall, Ichikawa’s strongest criticism of the war, Japanese nationalism, is a short part of the film while the dead, a more general effect of all wars, is lamented solemnly. Ichikawa could have taken a much more critical stance on war, but either unaware of Japan’s war crimes or knowing the Japanese had suffered plenty, chose to take a more soothing approach through Mizushima’s mission. In IR Theory, it has been posited that one of the reasons the number of wars has decreased is the sheer cost of war beginning with World War I. Civil wars continue, but have dropped significantly and in this day and age, Imperial War, wars made to conquer territory, are rare. Modern weapons make the costs too high for gains too little. At least through The Burmese Harp, Ichikawa would seem to agree.
Godzilla certainly says that the costs of war, and the potential of nuclear weapons, are far too high. Where Ichikawa sought to help his audience remember what they have been through and help them heal, Honda’s Godzilla presents a much blunter reminder. The main plot of Godzilla highlights human actions and the consequences to them; Godzilla was awakened by humans testing nuclear weapons. In his wake, Godzilla destroys Tokyo with his sheer size and atomic breath, ruining home and killing many people. Shown below, the images of a burning Tokyo are highly reminiscent of what Japanese cities, including Tokyo, must have looked like when they were firebombed and Hiroshima and Nagasaki after they were hit with a-bombs during WWII.
Like The Burmese Harp, Godzilla offers some critiques about war in general, but differs in that its critiques are not at a specific country for the most part. The involvement of nuclear weapons implicates the US, as it is the only country to have used nuclear weapons and on Japan no less. However, no US soldiers or symbols are ever shown; Honda seems to be criticizing humans as whole rather than by nation. Scientist Serizawa has a weapon capable of destroying Godzilla, but is reluctant to use it for fear of what people will do with it after. Serizawa’s dialogue in particular warns about the nature of humans, including himself, which seems to say that all humans have that destructive potential, no matter where they are from. Unable to let more people die, Serizawa compromises; he allows the Oxygen Destroyer to be used, but then makes sure he dies too so Serizawa dies with the knowledge of how to create the Destroyer. Honda implies that although the US used the atomic bomb on Japan, Japan likely would have acted the same had the a-bomb been in their possession. Honda uses much more vivid and striking images than Ichikawa perhaps in the hopes that humans will not just mourn war, but be haunted by our potential so we may avoid war and the use of nuclear and other such weapons.
Seven Samurai may not feature a full scale war, but it does feature the same kind of planning, training, loss of life, and other consequences war usually entails. Compared with Godzilla and The Burmese Harp, Seven Samurai is a much more “slice of life” kind of story. Director Kurosawa takes the time to show us the daily lives of the farmers and individual samurai and uses his characters effectively. He shows the audience how miserable the lives of the farmers are, how they are secretly crafty, and why they should not be hated for being sneaky and cowardly. Kikuchiyo functions as a go between; he is a samurai, but was born a peasant and understands their plights. The circumstances of the civil war have made it so they must do everything within their power to survive. So while we may have trouble sympathizing with the farmers in comparison to the noble Kambei, Kikuchiyo shames the samurai and the audience for looking down on them when it is the world that gave them no choice as to how they should live. Kambei shows us as noble as we think him and other samurai; even he will hide in times of war if it will save his life. Through the characters, the audience gets more realistic depiction of war. Kambei and Shichiroji are brave and noble, but they do their best to survive. Seven Samurai’s ending also makes it different. While it is not unusual for soldiers and civilians to bear the brunt of the costs of war, samurai were glorified soldiers and yet they lost more than the farmers. Soldiers usually make sacrifices for their homeland, but the samurai have no place with the farmers. Although neither group in this film is technically participating in the Japanese civil wars, it has had consequences for all groups involved.
Japanese audiences surely asked themselves walking out of The Burmese Harp and Godzilla “Was the war worth it?” and the end of Seven Samurai seems to ask the same. Was protecting the peasants worth the lives of 4 samurai while they gained nothing for it? It could have been a policing war, meaning a third party intervened to prevent one state from becoming too powerful in the area, but that was not an apparent motivation in the film. None of these films offer a clear answer, but attest to what humans pay for conflict, no matter what the size. These three directors took fairly different approaches to the subject of war and yet each in their own way solemnly, directly or indirectly, presented their case against war. Honor in terms of battling to the death is a concept paid much lip service to, but the reality is far different. They would agree with IR scholars and say war is too costly to humans to continue as a means for settling disputes or to do anything truly.
