 The novel is more open than the 1956 film about Japan's responsibility for the war.In Takeyama's novel one of the soldiers talks of the "terrible trouble" which Japan has brought to Burma, and the hero soldier-become monk Mizushima criticizes Japan's colonial ambitions as "wasteful desires" and the Japanese having "forgotten the most important things in life", a perspective which is downplayed in the film.There are two film adaptations and an animated television version (all with the same title as the novel in Japanese)