Based on a semi-autobiographical 1952 novel by Shohei Ooka, Fires on the Plain (1959) offers an antiwar statement like no other. During the waning days of World War II as Japanese forces have lost their grip on their occupation of the Philippines, a soldier named Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) suffering from tuberculosis is ordered away from his fellow soldiers who can no longer support his increasing incapacitation. If he isn't accepted upon returning to the Japanese military hospital, he is ordered to commit suicide - with his own grenade. Unfortunately, Allied forces now control the routes back to the hospital, while the local population is hardly receptive to the remaining Japanese invaders. Along the way he encounters other soldiers resorting to unimaginable lengths to sustain themselves in a landscape turning into an inhospitable hell on earth.

Originally titled Nobi, this film is the most harrowing entry in the career of its director, Kon Ichikawa. Part of the postwar movement of influential Japanese directors most famously represented in the West by Akira Kurosawa, Ichikawa avoided any sort of genre pigeonholing by using the skills he honed as an animator and a studio director-for-hire (for Toho) on commercial projects to explore deeper and more wide-ranging subject matter. His first major breakthrough was 1956's The Burmese Harp, an examination of Buddhist philosophy amid the corpse-strewn remnants of World War II which served as the more hopeful, optimistic flip side of the subsequent, much more punishing Fires on the Plain. His subsequent work ranges from stylistically experimental documentaries like 1965's Tokyo Olympiad to piercing character studies like 1963's An Actor's Revenge, even tackling a sprawling adaptation of 47 Ronin in 1994. His most significant period from the mid-'50s to the late '60s was also characterized by collaborations with his screenwriter wife, Natto Wada, who tackled a wide range of subject matter with equal skill. Though they remained married until her death in 1983, she essentially retired from writing in 1965, only returning briefly decades later to write two more films.

One of Japan's busiest actors until the late '70s, Eiji Funakoshi has been granted a major international reappraisal thanks to the wave of important, often previously unseen Japanese titles on DVD during the past decade. Though he worked steadily in character roles since 1948, Fires on the Plain was a major leading role for him and led to a string of memorable roles including several for director Yasuzo Masumura, himself an Ichikawa protégée: Afraid to Die (1960) opposite the notorious Yukio Mishima, The Black Test Car (1962) , the magnificent Manji (1964), and the harrowing lead role in the 1969 horror classic, Blind Beast. However, for western viewers he may always be best remembered as Dr. Hidaka, the starring role in 1965's Gamera which introduced the world's most beloved flying, fire-breathing turtle. He even returned to the series four years later as a different doctor in the equally beloved Gamera vs. Guiron (1969). He stepped away from the big screen in 1977, focusing instead on TV work for two more decades before retiring completely.

Though the arrival of the Japanese new wave shortly afterwards introduced a more extreme and deliberately provocative national style which remained in effect for many years, Ichikawa's accomplishment with Fires on the Plain endured long enough to establish the film as one of his unimpeachable classics and, alongside the same year's The Human Condition from Masaki Kobayashi, remains one of the most unflinching studies of the country's role in World War II in its immediate aftermath. Even other countries took notice, with the 1962 American film No Man Is an Island putting Jeffrey Hunter through a very similar storyline, albeit with a much more Hollywood resolution. More recently, filmmakers exposed to the director's work have paid explicit homage to his films, with this one in particular inspiring several incidents and moments of dialogue in Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) by Clint Eastwood, another study of defeated Japanese forces coping with the devastating and dehumanizing consequences of combat. However, no film since has dared to venture into this territory with the unflinching bravery of Ichikawa, who created a dark look at the heart of war that still resonates as strongly today.

Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Screenplay: Shohei Ooka, Natto Wada
Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi, Setsuo Shibata
Production Design: Atsuji Shibata
Music: Yasushi Akutagawa
Film Editing: Tatsuji Nakashizu
Cast: Eiji Funakoshi (Tamura), Osamu Takizawa (Yasuda), Mickey Curtis (Nagamatsu), Mantaro Ushio (Sergeant), Kyu Sazanka (Army surgeon).
BW-108m.

by Nathaniel Thompson