Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Japanese: ), also known in many European editions as Furyo (俘虜, Japanese for "prisoner of war"), is a 1983 British-Japanese wartime drama film directed by Nagisa Oshima, produced by Jeremy Thomas and starring David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kitano and Jack Thompson. The screenplay by Oshima with Paul Mayersberg was based on Sir Laurens van der Post's experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II as depicted in his works "The Seed and the Sower" (1963) and "The Night of the New Moon" (1970). Sakamoto also wrote
Laurens van der Post Van der Post retired from the army and was made a CBE. The events of these early post-war years in Java are examined in his memoir "The Admiral's Baby" (1996). With the war over and his business with the army concluded, van der Post returned to South Africa in late 1947 to work at the "Natal Daily News", but with the election victory of the National Party and the onset of apartheid he came back to London. He was later to publish a critique of apartheid ("The Dark Eye in Africa", 1955), basing many of his insights on his developing