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Perhaps the mentality of the Japanese colonel, Saito, was essentially the same as that of his prisoner, Colonel Nicholson.

Perhaps the conduct of each of the two enemies, superficially so dissimilar, was in fact simply a different though equally meaningless manifestation of the same spiritual reality. Perhaps it dictated the behavior of the former, without their being aware of it, as forcibly and fatally as it did that of the latter, and no doubt that of every race in the world. Saito.ĭuring the last war 'saving face' was perhaps as vitally important to the British as it was to the Japanese. I enjoyed this tale of obsession within a parable on the futility and absurdity of war, loosely based on Japanese use of British prisoners of war to build a railroad bridge in the jungles of Siam during World War II.īoulle as narrator opens the novel equating the values and behavior of the West, specifically the British, and more specifically its symbol, Col.