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 Hitchcock planned to film the book, but lost support from South African authorities and gave up the idea. Penguin Books kept "Flamingo Feather" in print until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1955 the BBC commissioned van der Post to return to the Kalahari in search of the Bushmen, a journey that turned into a six-part television documentary series in 1956. In 1958 his best known book was published under the same title as the BBC series: "The Lost World of the Kalahari". He followed this in 1961 by "The Heart of the Hunter", derived from "Specimens of Bushman