Where was Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence filmed?
1983 film by Nagisa Ōshima
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) was filmed in Auckland and Rarotonga — 2 recorded filming locations in New Zealand, the Cook Islands. Every one is a filming-location statement on Wikidata, not a guess.
See them on the map → Wikipedia Source data
Filming locations
-
🏙 Towns & cities
Auckland
🇳🇿 New Zealand
city on the North Island, New Zealand
“The boarding school sequence was shot on location at King's College, a private high school in Auckland, New Zealand.” Wikipedia
-
🏞 Landscapes & nature
Rarotonga
🇨🇰 Cook Islands
island of the Cook Islands
“While shooting the film, Bowie was amazed that Ōshima had a two- to three-acre camp built on the remote Polynesian island of Rarotonga, but most of the camp was never shot on film.” Wikipedia
Also per Wikipedia's Production section
Wikipedia’s Production section names 2 more places. A sentence in an article is weaker evidence than a Wikidata statement, so these are listed apart, never mixed into the statement list, and the claim links straight to where it came from.
-
🏛 Landmarks & buildings
King's College, Auckland
🇳🇿 New Zealand
private secondary (year 9-15) school in Auckland, New Zealand
-
🏛 Landmarks & buildings
The Strand Station
🇳🇿 New Zealand
regional train station in Auckland, New Zealand
“Other scenes were filmed in various locations around Auckland including Auckland Railway Station.” Wikipedia
Places whose own article says it was shot there
1 place whose own Wikipedia article names this film as something shot there, where Wikidata records nothing and this film’s own article does not say so either. The weakest evidence on this atlas: no pin on the map, and nothing in the downloads. Each sentence is quoted whole and linked to the article it came from, so it can be judged rather than taken on trust.
-
Rarotonga Cook Islands
“A number of feature-length films are linked to Rarotonga: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, depicting a Japanese POW camp for British prisoners in the island of Java in the year 1942, was filmed here, The Other Side of Heaven, which is set in Niuatoputapu, Tonga, but was filmed in part on Rarotonga, and Johnny Lingo which was set here.” Wikipedia
Also shot in these places
Set in the same places
More filmed in New Zealand
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2002
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout 2018
- Mulan 2020
- Ghost in the Shell 2017
- M3GAN 2022
Every filming location in New Zealand →
Frequently asked questions
How many filming locations does Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence have?
2 places recorded on Wikidata, and 2 places named in its Wikipedia article, labelled per Wikipedia, across 2 countries.
In which countries was Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence filmed?
New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
Which other productions were filmed at the same places?
Mulan (2020), M3GAN (2022), M3GAN 2.0 (2025) and Ash vs Evil Dead (2015–2018), each listed on this page.
Where does this information come from?
Filming location statements on Wikidata, plus places named in the production's own Wikipedia article, which are labelled per Wikipedia. Nothing is scraped from listicles and nothing is generated.