Voice of Inouye's parrot: Mizushima, let's return to Japan together.
British officer: We've done all we can. The troops that took Triangle Mountain have returned home. The Japanese survivors are not in this town.

Captain Inouye: But that tune?

British officer: You hear a certain way of playing - a few notes floating by the breeze, and it's enough to make you think a dead man is alive. You must be dreaming.

British officer: [to his adjutant] He must be dreaming!
Captain Inouye: The songs uplifted our spirits and sometimes our hearts.
Voice of Mizushima's parrot: No, I can't go back.
Subtitles: [Last lines] The soil of Burma is red, and so are its rocks!
Captain Inouye: [Excerpt from Mizushima's letter, which Captain Inouye reads to his men as they sail back to Japan] As I climbed mountains and crossed streams, burying the bodies left in the grasses and streams, my heart was wracked with questions. Why must the world suffer such misery? Why must there be such inexplicable pain? As the days passed, I came to understand. I realized that, in the end, the answers were not for human beings to know, that our work is simply to ease the great suffering of the world. To have the courage to face suffering, senselessness and irrationality without fear, to find the strength to create peace by one's own example. I will undergo whatever training is necessary for this to become my unshakable conviction.

The Burmese Harp Quotes

Extended Reading

The Burmese Harp short comments

Alvena 2022-04-22 07:01:49

Classic anti-war film. Because I once saw a Buddhist pagoda dedicated to the dead of the Japanese army on Sagaing Mountain, the experience in my heart seems to be more profound. Myanmar is an eternal mourning in the hearts of the Japanese. Among the 180,000 soldiers who died in battle, more than half were killed by my heroic expeditionary force. But neither Japan nor the United Kingdom gave up the search for the remains of fallen compatriots and the establishment of cemeteries. I hope that one day, I can see the pagoda or cemetery of the expeditionary army on Mandalay Hill.