In the case of Kon Ichikawa our knowledge is confined to four films: The Burmese Harp, Conflagration, Odd Obsessions and Fires on the Plain, only one of which suggests his former preoccupation with bizarre comedy; yet together they reveal a highly contemporary artist tormented by a particularly fiery private hell. Perhaps it is symptomatic that two of the films are concerned with war: as with other Japanese directors of his generation …, memories of the war and the shattering implications of the defeat were inevitably carried over into the post-war period. Certainly, Fires on the Plain … recalls the conflict with ferocious immediacy: no film has recorded the physical and mental degradation of an army in retreat with such obsessive zeal. And yet, as we follow the tubercular Private Tamura, an outcast from his unit, in his terrible journey across the Filippino plains, Ichikawa maintains such a rigour and discipline...