The Seed and the Sower opposed codes of honour. The final segment is Lawrence’s reminiscence of a brief affair with a woman whose name he never learned, shortly before his capture by the Japanese. The Seed and the Sower The Seed and the Sower is a book by South African writer Laurens van der Post, consisting of three interrelated stories blended into a novel, first published in 1963. The novel was filmed in 1983 as "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", directed by Nagisa Oshima and starring David Bowie, Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kitano. The first story is set in a Japanese Prisoner of War
Laurens van der Post different nationalities. Along with others, he organised a "camp university" with courses from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and he also organized a camp farm to supplement nutritional needs. He could also speak some basic Japanese, which helped him greatly. Once, depressed, he wrote in his diary: "It is one of the hardest things in this prison life: the strain caused by being continually in the power of people who are only half-sane and live in a twilight of reason and humanity." He wrote about his prison experiences in "A Bar of Shadow" (1954), "The Seed and the Sower"