What It Means to be Human: Masaki Kobayashi's 'The Human Condition Trilogy'

A Note to the Reader: In writing this piece, I have attempted to avoid spoilers. The plot summary below is of the superficial kind and should not spoil anyone’s viewing experience. For a more comprehensive summary, refer to: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Condition_(film_series)

As far as cinematic war chronicles go, there is not one that is grander and more urgent than Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth 9-hour-and-47-minute trilogy The Human Condition (1959-61), with David Shipman, the famed British film critic, calling it “unquestionably the greatest film ever made” (984). And yet, ironically, few casual viewers will have seen it, partly due to its off-putting length.

This should be rectified. The trilogy carries with it a message as pressing and disconcerting as that of Platoon (1986) or Apocalypse Now (1979), and should be acknowledged by anyone with an ounce of interest in humanist cinema. The film may be more than half a century old, but the protagonist Kaji’s fate is a timeless phenomenon. Even in our so-called “era of peace,” Kaji’s tribulations are still in every sense a reflection of ours. Every decision he makes (and the consequence thereof) is something each one of us must face one moonless night. It is therefore my intention in this essay to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Kaji’s character.

The plot of the trilogy, based on Jumpei Gomikawa’s novel, is episodic: in Part 1 No Greater Love, the young and idealistic Kaji (hypnotically portrayed by Japan’s superstar Tatsuya Nakadai) is assigned the role of labour supervisor to a mining workforce of Chinese prisoners in Japanese-occupied Manchuria during WWII. Kaji and his wife Michiko travel to this ghostly terrain and intend to establish an ordinary life despite trying circumstances. But Kaji is anything but an ordinary young man. He has principles and unbending morals. The humanist in him does not allow him to be as ruthless as his colleagues, which makes him a non-conformist in their eyes. He pleads for clemency when it comes to the treatment of the Chinese prisoners. This antagonises those who see the Chinese as mere vermin to be crushed at will. Kaji’s righteousness sends him down a path he did not anticipate. His superiors view him as a threat to Japanese unity, terminate his function, and send him off to war.

Part 2 Road to Eternity sees Kaji in a boot camp where recruits are treated with the same cruelty the Chinese prisoners were subjected to in Part 1. Kaji, now separated from his wife, displays his trademark stoicism throughout. Though chastised, savagely beaten, and humiliated by the veterans, Kaji does not waver an inch. He continues to plead for clemency, this time for the rookies who are expected to develop battle skills overnight. His inflexibility again alarms his superiors, who decide he will be better off serving at the Front.

Part 3 A Soldier’s Prayer details the defeat of the Empire of the Sun and Kaji’s encounter with the Russian army. At the Russian POW camp, Kaji wakes up to the fact that socialism, as iron-handed a system as the fascism it has eliminated, can never fulfill its promise. It is here that he learns the ultimate ugly truth about being human. His ordeal continues even after the camp. At this crossroads the film steps out of the confines of the anti-war treatise, and expands thematically to become a complex examination of the meaning and value of an individual’s existence.

Kaji represents the Everyman in every aspect. Here is a man who knows who he is and does not bow down before authority. The Japanese mentality during wartime was obsessed with conformity. The Emperor had to be served, and unequivocal loyalty to the Empire of the Sun was demanded. The power of Japanese imperialism was just as absolute as that of the Western variation, but in this case, the individual was burdened with the extra weight of chauvinism. A Japanese man who did not share the same morals as the Empire was quickly labelled a “traitor.” Kaji does not care for the Empire’s morals and rules; he has his own set of moral rules, and these rules are modelled on a steadfast sense of humanism. The Japanese title of the trilogy, 人間の條件, in fact translates as “requirements for being human” – an awkward expression in English. It is however an altogether more accurate title. It specifies exactly what Kaji’s character is made of.

In a late scene in Part 1 No Greater Love, Kaji, after a disheartening confrontation with a half-Chinese, half-Japanese worker, questions his national identity and the meaning it implies: “It's not my fault that I'm Japanese... yet it's my worst crime that I am!” This line lays down the existentialist foundation of the film, revealing that in times of war the individual is subjected to the will of the collective. Kaji has played no role in the commencement of the war, and yet he is expected to take part in it and assume the responsibilities of a dedicated, rule-abiding soldier. Kaji rejects the cruel ways of militarism, opting instead for egalitarianism and justice. The lone hero – some would say a foolhardy hero – stands up against the rulers, fully aware that there will be dire consequences for his recalcitrance. (This is made brutally evident in Part 2 Road to Eternity, in which the Japanese military hierarchy is portrayed as masochistic and inhumane.)

The only way Kaji can endure the physical and mental tortures inflicted on him is his determination to return to Michiko’s side. His promise to her becomes his only lifeline when his journey into the pits of hell goes beyond the unimaginable. As his comrades are slaughtered en masse during the infamous Soviet-Japanese War of 1945, the only hope he is left with is in the form of Michiko. And thus begins his long march home to South Manchuria.

In Part 3 A Soldier’s Prayer, his sufferings triple – out in the inhospitable wild and in the Russian POW camp. He is compelled to compromise his sense of righteousness to survive, but he never loses sight of his humanity, refusing to let the innocent suffer, even though he himself is in no position to spare anyone. As the 9-hour-and-47-minute epic comes to its inevitable devastating end, the viewer finds himself grappling with a moral question: Is being human at all possible in a world of indifferent evil without some form of self-sacrifice? This is where the film goes for the viewer’s guts. It reaches deep inside of him, causing him great distress, and forces him to re-evaluate the meaning of being human.

In that sense the film fits perfectly into the mould of twentieth-century existentialism. It would even be fitting to resurrect Camus’ brand of absurdism and view the film through its lens. The individual is a puppet of the System. His existence is never wholly his, as he is bound by social mores and conventions. The elements are always against him; every phenomenon in the universe conspires against him to quicken his demise. In fact, that is a slight misrepresentation. To say that the universe “conspires” against us is to say that it has a conscience, and that it acknowledges the individual.

Kaji’s fate in The Human Condition argues the opposite. It shows us that the universe (or society) cannot give two hoots about the individual’s fate. The cruelty of the universe does not lie in its will; it is in its indifference. There exists no divine power that redeems or judges. There are only flawed humans who bungle, wage wars, rend, rape, scheme, destroy, and self-destruct. Within this maelstrom of madness and carnage, the individual must find a way to survive, with his dignity intact. Kaji’s inflexible morals show that to be a human being is to remain true to oneself. When the world is a battlefield of treacherous inconstancies, the only certainty the individual has is his own principled self.

The film therefore deals a double blow: it is a fiery indictment of collective thinking, in this case mindless nationalism, and an ultra-realistic portrayal of how the individual is affected by the senselessness of war. Kaji is deprived of the basics of being human when his fatherland plunges him into war. Individual freedom is pitched against social/national demand. To serve one’s country means to put one’s moral judgement aside and subscribe to dehumanising military ways. Wartime tyranny requires Kaji to abandon his good faith in people, but this is something he is unwilling to do. Having faith in people is one of the “requirements of being human.”

This gives rise to bitter irony.

Kaji, the embodiment of goodness and pure-heartedness, is put to the test time and again. It is as though the war machine could not abide a moral human being and were out to demoralise him. The dilemma that stems from this irony causes the viewer to doubt the point of goodness. Does this mean being good is not, as he is often told, rewarded? The film pulls no punches. It gives a raw depiction of how goodness is spat and trampled on. Having gone out of his way to save a Chinese POW in Part 1, Kaji is ironically called a “Japanese devil” by the Chinese. The same derogatory term is heard again, with three-fold the bitterness, in Part 3 just before the curtain comes down.

This is not the result of the writer or the director’s cynicism; it is an accurate representation of reality, as both Gomikawa and Kobayashi served in the Japanese army during WWII and experienced the inhumanity of it all first-hand. However, if there is one thing the trilogy does not preach, it is the abandonment of goodness as a result of cynicism. Kaji remains true to himself – even if it comes at a tragically high cost.

The individual who clings on to his humanity when the world demands unwavering obedience is branded a social pariah. What comes to mind, then, is Camus’ protagonist Meursault in The Outsider (1940), who, much like Kaji, operates according to his own system of thought and has to pay heavily for it. Although Meursault differs from Kaji temperamentally, they have something in common: being cast out of society because they do not subscribe to anyone’s rules but their own. There is heroism in their makings, but their obstinacy is also their undoing. Their unconventional reaction to the absurdities of human life leaves no room for them in a world of submission and compliance.

These characters are symbolic of the modern man in the sense that like them, we do not have unfettered freedom living in a hierarchical community. We may think we are better off in the twenty-first century, but that is no more than an illusion born out of complacency. Wherever there is communal existence, there exists a form of hierarchy. With hierarchy comes oppression of the individual. Anyone who doubts this should try contesting one’s political leader or, less dramatically, one’s boss. Regardless of what kind of society we find ourselves in, there is always a degree of oppression. The individual can never really show his true colours.

If this smacks of pessimism, I am guilty of not having been transparent. The Human Condition, in spite of its pervasive darkness, is the most life-affirming film I have had the pleasure of seeing. Its “positivity,” if one has to label it, is found within Kaji’s character, his unswerving conviction of the goodness in him, and his courage to choose for himself. What we have here is a literary expression of Sartre’s existentialist notion of “freedom of choice.” Kaji follows his sense of freedom, and this gives him a personalised system of moral principles that makes him more human than any of us who go from day to day without an immediate sense of purpose.

Shipman, D. The Story of Cinema, Hodder and Stoughton 1984

A Shochiku Production

Director: Masaki Kobayashi

Writers: Zenzo Matsuyama, Masaki Kobayashi, Koichi Inagaki, Jumpei Gomikawa

Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Michiyo Aratama, Chikage Awashima