Fires on the Plain (1959)

My brother was performing in Okinawa. He went on a tour of caves on the island where Japanese troops took refuge from U.S. bombing and shelling in preparation for the invasion of Okinawa during World War Two. A young Japanese woman led the tour. She suddenly announced they needed to leave and she hurried them out. My brother found the cave really creepy anyway, and he said that the guide told them afterward that she saw the ghost of Japanese soldier.

Apparently even the Japanese find World War Two Japanese soldiers scary. I don't know why. I think they had one of the least scary uniforms in the war.

I watched Fires on the Plain (Japan, 1959) directed by Kon Ichikawa. A bleak anti-war film. It makes a monkey out of Saving Private Ryan (if you take Spielberg's movie to be anti-war) and does so without gore effects.

I had seen it a couple of times in the 1970's and '80's. At the time, I took the cannibalism to be symbolic, but you might watch the Japanese documentary, The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987) for more information on that.

Fires on the Plain is about a soldier with tuberculosis. His company has been reduced to the size of a platoon and he's of no help to them, so they keep sending him to what passes for an Army hospital. The "doctor" tells him that if he can walk, he's too healthy to be there, so they send him back. His sergeant gives him a grenade and orders him to blow himself up if the hospital won't take him.

The Japanese soldiers all look terrible. They're malnourished. The actors were given little to eat and weren't allowed to brush their teeth. In you ran into one in a cave, you'd be terrified.