The Human Condition dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-1961
The Human Condition, directed by Kobayashi Masaki, is the screen adaptation
of writer Gomikawa Junpei's long, 6-volume anti-war novel.
In The Road to Eternity (Part III of the trilogy), the protagonist
is the pacifistic Kaji, played by Tatsuya Nakadai. One of the great works of
Japanese cinema, this nine and one-half hour long, humanistic anti-war fresco
is magnificent, including many forceful scenes that depict the horrors and cruelties
of war. Its director, Kobayashi, said, "I wanted to bring to life the tragedy
of men who are forced into war against their will. Kaji is both the oppressor
and the oppressed and he learns that he can never stop being an oppressor while
he himself is oppressed. Of course I wanted to denounce the crimes of war but
I also wanted to show how human society can become inhumane." Strong-armed into
the Japanese military during World War II, Kaji has reluctantly learned to kill
on the battlefields. Upon his country's surrender, Kaji gives himself up to
the Russian troops, hoping to receive better treatment than he had at the hands
of his Japanese superiors. But his hopes are dashed once more, and he is subject
to cruelty upon cruelty while imprisoned in a Manchurian POW camp.
Kobayashi's film is a powerful one, "a graphically vivid, uncompromising critique
of the brutalities and horrors of the Second World War and their effect on the
emotional lives of the participants," as one reviewer puts it. Kaji's character
emerges as a tough, resourceful individual who will do what it takes to survive.
At first, as a civilian working with mining operations in South Manchuria, he
tried hard to improve labor conditions for the miners, convinced that it would
increase productivity. But considered too liberal by the old hands and the pit
bosses, he is constantly conspired against and eventually, his deferment is
cancelled and he is conscripted. In the army, he just tries to survive the rigors
and brutality of the Japanese military system. They suspect him of being a "red"
and keep the pressure on him as a new recruit. But he will not break. Eventually,
though, he kills a brutalizing fellow soldier, whom he held responsible for
the suicide of his friend. Then later, he kills a Russian guard just so he and
his comrades can sneak across a road being traversed by a convoy of Russian
trucks. Later, speaking to his wife, Michiko, in his imagination, he brands
himself a murderer--all in the name of survival so he can return to her.
An interesting conversation occurs midway through this third film in the trilogy.
The Russians have entered the war in Manchuria and smashed Kaji's unit. Stragglers
are on their own. The hard core troops, of course, want to fight to the death,
but Kaji knows that "Our Kwangtung Army is finsished. We are now defeated men."
He elects to try to walk to Southern Manchuria in hopes of eventually getting
back to Japan. As the stragglers who opted to join him trudge along, Kaji is
asked:
Is the war over?
K: It must be.
What will be the outcome?
K: Like Germany. . .unconditional surrender.
But after that, what about us? What I mean is, what happens to us as a people?
K: [That is] the big question.
Doesn't defeat mean national collapse (Kuni wo horobiru)?
K: What is the nation? Certainly the country you knew will be dead. And it
should be! We are all struggling to survive. How do we give birth to a country
where people are free? That's the real question.
I hope democratic forces will unite to cope with defeat.
K: Japan has such forces? They are mostly helpless creatures like myself.
They're no use; they cannot do anything. (Nani mo deki wa shinai yo)
Why so cynical? The test is yet to come.
K: That's besides the point. We entered military service and fought in battle.
We got wiped out. And now we are trudging aimlessly on. Killers who failed our
buddies. How many of us are qualified for coping with defeat?
It is interesting to think of this conversation in the context of what Pvt.
Mizushima writes toward the end of his letter, about rebuilding Japan and what
the future might hold. "Our country has waged war," he writes, "and
now is suffering. That is because we were greedy, because we were so arrogant
that we forgot human values, because we had only a superficial ideal of civilization."
(Takeyama, The Harp of Burma, p. 130). How do these two sets of reflections
differ?
Here are some more observations on the film, The Human Condition:
It is rare when an episode of national history can be interpreted without the
burden of illusions, both obsolete and nostalgic. And this is perhaps one of
the great strengths of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition, a nine-hour
epic about Japan's occupation of China during the Second World War. The trilogy
begins with an attack on the inhuman practices within the Japanese Army and
ends with a bitter denunciation of Stalinism by the would-be-socialist hero,
Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a Japanese soldier who has confronted the horrid face
of war and found it unyielding. In grand Dostoyevskian flourishes, Kobayashi
suggests the impossibility of an individual altering the ethical standards of
a social system. Kaji, driven by an idealized vision of Japan redeemed by social
reform, tries to overcome injustice and exploitation during a military conquest
based solely on these principles. Brutalized by the very country he defends,
Kaji refuses to desert, for desertion implies relinquishing responsibility for
his own homeland. Kaji's heroism lies in this exacting refusal to abandon Japan
or his humanity.
Part One finds Kaji working as a supervisor in a forced labor camp in southern
Manchuria where he and his wife (Michiyo Aratama) attempt to better the dreadful
lot of the enslaved Chinese workers. Kaji is accused of dissent, tortured, then
inducted into the army. In Part Two, Kaji is equally appalled by the horrendous
treatment afforded recruits. Given the rank of officer, he tries to install
more humane procedures but only succeeds in attracting the ire of his fellow
officers. By Part Three, the Japanese army is being routed by superior Russian
troops. Fleeing to the south, Kaji is captured by the Soviet army and imprisoned.
Here, he learns the bitter truth of the Red Army as liberators. Kobayashi's
The Human Condition can be viewed as a single aesthetic entity, complete in
its sweep of historical events and visual stylizations. The gargantuan undertaking
to dramatize the wilful ironies of the Manchurian campaign never compromises
Kobayashi's ability to define the human scale of injustice. Standing-in for
the director, Kaji says, "Minor facts ignored by history can be fatal to
the individual." It is Masaki Kobayashi's recognition of "minor facts"
that joins the poetic to the journalistic in a scathing epic about the cruelties
of war.