Summer Soldiers (サマー・ソルジャー, Samā sorujā) is a 1972 Japanese drama and anti-war film written by John Nathan and directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara.
While he constantly changes his hide-outs, Jim, who does not speak the language, is confronted with cultural differences, meeting average Japanese people, political radicals who want to use him for their purposes, and other deserters.
Summer Soldiers was Teshigahara's first feature film in four years,[4] producing a script by American writer and translator John Nathan.
[4] Summer Soldiers also marks the only time that Teshigahara's wife, actress Toshiko Kobayashi, starred in one of his films.
[7] Tony Rayns, writing for Time Out magazine, was critical of the script's "over-schematisation", but pointed out the film's strengths which he found in "a rigorous honesty about the psychology of desertion, a complete absence of sentimentality, and a meticulous naturalism in the settings and incidental details".