Fires on the Plain (A Memorandum-like Impression)

This film was also screened at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho as part of the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.
I had never heard of this film's reputation, but I decided to watch it because Kon Ichikawa was the director.

The setting is Leyte Island in the Philippines during World War II.
Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) was ordered by his squad leader to go to the clinic because he was suffering from a lung disease.
However, because his symptoms were not severe, he was kicked out of the clinic, and when he returned to his squad, he was scolded by the squad leader for coming back.
Told that a soldier who cannot fight properly is a burden, Tamura was ordered to go to the clinic again.
Although he returned to the clinic, Tamura was once again not allowed in.
In the forest outside the clinic, other soldiers who were not allowed in because their symptoms were mild, like Tamura, were loitering about.
Tamura had no choice but to join that group.
Before long, the U.S. military attack began, and the clinic was engulfed in flames.
Tamura's group and the soldiers at the clinic fled, but the severely wounded soldiers could not escape and lost their lives there.

After that, Tamura wandered through the forest and visited local houses and villages.
There, he stole food from the locals and took lives.
He then met and joined another unit of the Japanese army and headed with the other soldiers toward the assembly point for the withdrawal order.
On the way, he reunited with Yasuda and Nagamatsu, who had been in the group in the forest by the clinic, but the two said they would not head to the assembly point and would stay behind.
The soldiers reached a difficult point where they had to cross a river, but the U.S. military was lying in wait there, and most of the soldiers were killed.
Even soldiers who waved white flags to surrender were shot to death by U.S. soldiers who were confused and speaking a local language.
With nowhere else to go, Tamura had no choice but to return to the place where Yasuda and Nagamatsu were hiding.

Tamura, who does not show his emotions and obediently follows his superior's orders, gradually begins to lose his sanity as the story progresses.
Something must have changed within him from the moment he ran into a local in an uninhabited village and ended up shooting them to death.
From around the time he joined the other unit, his character changed and he became somewhat talkative.
And the ending becomes a fight to the death with Yasuda and Nagamatsu.

The original work is by Shohei Ooka, and it seems it was published as a supplement to Ooka's war chronicle, 'Taken Captive'.
However, while 'Taken Captive' is based on Ooka's actual experiences, 'Fires on the Plain' is said to be completely fictional.
In the latter half, when he joins up with Yasuda and Nagamatsu, these two refer to dead soldiers as 'monkeys' and eat them.
Since there is a line after a gunshot saying 'I let the monkey get away,' perhaps they were not shooting dead soldiers, but rather shooting their own comrades to eat them.
It seems that in the original work, that part is expressed clearly, but in the film, it was not a direct expression.

Even so, the madness of wartime was depicted firmly.
In this film, the pretense of 'for the sake of the country' often seen in war movies does not appear.
Everyone is desperate to survive.
I only had a gentle image of the lead actor, Eiji Funakoshi, from 'Jikan desu yo' and 'Netchu Jidai,' so I was quite surprised that he was an actor who could perform like this.

It seems Shinya Tsukamoto did a remake in 2015 starring himself, so if I have the chance, I would like to watch that as well.

102. Fires on the Plain

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