The Human Condition (film series)

The Human Condition

DVD cover art for the Criterion Collection DVD release
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Produced by Shigeru Wakatsuki (I-III)
Masaki Kobayashi (II, III)
Written by Masaki Kobayashi (I-III)
Zenzo Matsuyama (I-III)
Koichi Inagaki (III)
Junpei Gomikawa (novel)
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai
Michiyo Aratama
Music by Chuji Kinoshita
Cinematography Yoshio Miyajima
Edited by Keiichi Uraoka
Production
company
Ninjin Club
Distributed by Shochiku
Release dates
 1959–1961
Running time
 579 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese
Mandarin
Russian

The Human Condition (人間の條件 Ningen no jōken) is a Japanese epic film trilogy made between 1959 and 1961, based on the six-volume novel published from 1956 to 1958 by Junpei Gomikawa.[1] It was directed by Masaki Kobayashi and stars Tatsuya Nakadai. The trilogy follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese pacifist and socialist, as he tries to survive in the totalitarian and oppressive world of World War II-era Japan. Altogether, the trilogy is 9 hours, 47 minutes long, not including intermissions, and is one of the longest fiction films ever made.[2]

Plot

The Human Condition follows the journey of the well-intentioned, yet naive Kaji who transitions from being a labor camp supervisor to an Imperial Army soldier and eventual Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and time again finds his own morals an impediment rather than an advantage.

No Greater Love

The first film, No Greater Love (1959), opens with Kaji marrying his sweetheart Michiko despite his misgivings about the future. The couple then move to a large mining operation in Japanese-colonized Manchuria, where Kaji is a labor supervisor assigned to a workforce of Chinese prisoners. He tries and ultimately fails to reconcile his humanistic ideals with the brutal reality of forced labor in an imperial system. The movie ends with him being drafted to military service, in order for his superiors to do away with his disturbing presence at the Labor camp.

Road to Eternity

In the second film, Road to Eternity (1959), Kaji, having lost his exemption from military service by protecting Chinese prisoners from unjust punishment, has now been conscripted into the Japanese Kwantung Army. Under suspicion of leftist sympathies, Kaji is assigned the toughest duties in his military recruiting class despite his excellent marksmanship and strong barracks discipline. His wife Michiko pleads for understanding in a letter to his commanding officer and later pays Kaji a highly unorthodox visit at his military facility to express her love and solidarity. Kaji considers escape across the front with his friend Shinjo, who is similarly under suspicion due to his brother's arrest for communist activities. Distrusting the idea that desertion will lead to freedom, and faithful to his wife, Kaji ultimately commits to continued military service despite his hardships.

When Obara, a poor-sighted, weak soldier in Kaji's unit, kills himself after troubles from home are compounded by ceaseless punishment and humiliation from other soldiers, Kaji demands disciplinary action from his superiors for PFC Yoshida, the ring leader of the troops who pushed Obara over the brink. While Yoshida is not disciplined, Kaji helps to seal his fate by refusing to rescue the vicious soldier when both men are trapped in quicksand while in pursuit of Shinjo, who finally seized the opportunity to desert. Part three of the trilogy (and the first half of this film) ends as Kaji is released from hospitalization related to the quicksand incident and is transported to the front with his unit.

As part four opens, Kaji is asked to lead a group of new recruits and promoted to private first class. He accepts his assignment with the condition that his men will be separated from a group of veteran artillerymen, who practice intense cruelty as punishment for the slightest offenses. Often taking the punishment for his men, Kaji is personally beaten many times by these veterans, despite his personal relationship with Second Lieutenant Kageyama. Demoralized by the fall of Okajima and continually battling with the veterans, Kaji and most of his men are sent on a month-long trench digging work detail. Their work is interrupted by a Soviet army onslaught that produces heavy Japanese casualties and the death of Kageyama. Forced to defend flat terrain with little fortification and light armament, the Japanese troops are overrun by Soviet tanks, and untold men are killed. Kaji survives the battle, but is forced to kill a maddened Japanese soldier with his bare hands in order to prevent Soviet soldiers from discovering his position. The film ends with Kaji screaming "I'm a monster, but I'm still alive!" and running in desperate search of any other Japanese survivors.

A Soldier's Prayer

Main article: A Soldier's Prayer

The final film in the trilogy is A Soldier's Prayer (1961). The Japanese forces having been shattered during the events of the second film, Kaji and some comrades attempt to elude capture by Soviet forces and find the remnants of the Kwantung army in South Manchuria. Following the bayonetting of a Russian soldier, however, Kaji is increasingly sick of combat and decides to abandon any pretense of rejoining the army. Instead, he leads fellow soldiers and a growing number of civilian refugees as they attempt to flee the warzone and return to their homes. Lost in a dense forest, the Japanese begin to infight and eventually many die of hunger, poisonous mushrooms and suicide. Emerging from the forest on their last legs, Kaji and the refugees encounter regular Japanese army troops, who deny them food as if they were deserters. Carrying on further south, Kaji and his associates find a well-stocked farmhouse which is soon ambushed by Chinese peasant fighters. A prostitute to whom Kaji had shown kindness is killed by these partisans, and Kaji vows to fight them rather to escape. However, overpowered by these newly armed Chinese forces, Kaji and his fellow soldiers are nearly killed and are forced to run through a flaming wheat field to survive. Kaji then encounters a group of fifty Japanese army holdouts who are attempting to resume combat in alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, whom they believe will be supported by American forces, in a civil war against Russian-backed Communist Chinese. Kaji, a believer in pacifism and socialism, rejects this strategy as misguided and doomed to failure. Eventually, Kaji and a group of Japanese soldiers, whose number has grown to fifteen, fight through Russian patrols and find an encampment of women and old men who seek their protection. Kaji is driven to continue moving in search of his wife, but decides to surrender to Soviet forces when the encampment is besieged.

Captured by the Red Army and subjected to treatment that echoes the violence meted out to the Chinese in the first film, Kaji and his protégé Terada resist the Japanese officers who run their work camp in cooperation with Soviet forces. While such resistance amounts to no more than picking through the Russian's' garbage for scraps of food and wearing gunnysacks to protect them from increasingly colder weather, Kaji is branded a saboteur and judged by a Soviet tribunal to harsh labor. With a corrupt translator and no other means of talking to the Russian officers with whom he feels ideological sympathies, Kaji becomes increasingly disillusioned by conditions in the camp and with Communist orthodoxy. When Terada is driven to exhaustion and death by harsh treatment from the collaborating officer Kirihara, Kaji decides to kill the man and then escape the camp alone. Still dreaming of finding his wife and abused as a worthless beggar and as a "Japanese devil" by the Chinese peasants of whom he begs mercy, Kaji eventually succumbs to the cold and dies in the vast winter wasteland covered in snow.

Cast

Tatsuya Nakadai and Michiyo Aratama in 1959

No Greater Love

Road to Eternity

A Soldier's Prayer

Production

The film was based upon Junpei Gomikawa's six-part autobiographical novel of the same name, which had strongly resonated with director Masaki Kobayashi. Like the novel's protagonist, he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and stationed in Japan-occupied Manchuria. Self-described as a pacifist and socialist, he had refused to rise above the rank of a private, feeling opposed to both the war and Japan's imperialist ideology at the time. Kobyashi adhered to such views for the rest of his life, always remaining critical of Japan's conformist culture.[3]

Remembering his own experiences in the war and feeling connected to the novel's events, Kobayashi secured the rights from Gomikawa and petitioned Shochiku to approve the project. Due to the subject matter directly criticizing the actions of Japan during WWII, the studio was initially unenthusiastic about the film and only relented when Kobayashi threatened to quit.[4] During filming, Kobayashi would have a copy of the original novel on hand, and aimed to be as faithful to Gomikawa's work as possible. If certain scenes were in the book, but not in the script, they would be added in when possible. The actors were usually notified of these changes a day in advance in order to memorize their new lines. Because of this striving for accuracy, Gomikawa was reportedly very pleased with the adaptation.[5]

Tatsuya Nakadai, who had previously appeared in Kobayashi's The Thick-Walled Room and Black River, was specifically chosen by the director to play the protagonist Kaji. Much of the supporting cast were veteran film and stage actors who had previously worked with Kobayashi on other projects, or who would later become regulars with the director. The film marked Nakadai's first leading role, and he later recalled his performance as being exceptionally challenging. Certain fight scenes called for actual contact, leading to the actor's face becoming swollen. The final sequence additionally involved Nakadai lying face-down in a field, the cameras not stopping until he was completely covered in a mound of snow.[5]

As opposed to hiring Shochiku staff, crew from the independent studio Ninjin Club were used instead. Kobayashi utilized cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima for the film, having been an admirer of his work for director Fumio Kamei.[6] Despite featuring extensive dialogue in Mandarin, none of the actors were actually Chinese. These lines were spoken phonetically with accompanying burnt-in Japanese subtitles on all prints. Non-Japanese and Russians were seemingly used for the roles of Soviet soldiers, though only Ed Keene and Ronald Self are credited. Since China-Japan relations were non-existent at the time due to the Cultural Revolution, Kobayashi scouted out filming locations in Hokkaido over a two-month period. Including pre-production, The Human Condition took four years to complete.[5]

Release

Noted for its length, The Human Condition runs at nine hours, thirty-nine minutes (579 minutes) and would be the longest film in Kobayashi's career.

The film was released as a trilogy in Japan between 1959 and 1961, while shown at various film festivals internationally. All-night marathons of the entire trilogy were occasionally shown in Japan, screenings with Tatsuya Nakadai in attendance typically sold out.[5] In 1999, Image Entertainment released The Human Condition on three separate Region 0 DVDs. These discs were noted for their poor image quality, cropped aspect ratio, lackluster sound, paraphrased English subtitle translation, and absence of extras.[7] On September 8, 2009, The Criterion Collection released the entire trilogy with a brand new restoration, improved translation, a bonus disc with interviews, and a 12-page supplementary booklet.[8] Arrow Video will release a Region B Blu-ray of The Human Condition on May 30, 2016. The three-disc set will include an introduction and select scene commentary by film critic Phillip Kemp, theatrical trailers, and a booklet with a new writing by David Desser.[9]

Reception

While the film earned considerable controversy at the time of its release in Japan, The Human Condition was critically acclaimed, won several international awards, and established Masaki Kobayashi as one of the most important Japanese directors of the generation.[4]

The British film critic David Shipman described the trilogy in his 1983 book, The Story of Cinema, as "unquestionably the greatest film ever made."[10] In his review for The New York Times in 2008, A.O. Scott declared that "Kobayashi’s monumental film can clarify and enrich your understanding of what it is to be alive."[11] Critic Philip Kemp, in his essay written for The Criterion Collection's release of the trilogy, argues that while "the film suffers from its sheer magnitude [and] from the almost unrelieved somberness of its prevailing mood . . . The Human Condition stands as an achievement of extraordinary power and emotional resonance: at once a celebration of the resilience of the individual conscience and a purging of forced complicity in guilt (of a nation and, as the title implies, of the whole human race), which Kaji attains through his death, and Kobayashi through the making of this film."[4]

At the 21st Venice International Film Festival, the film won the San Giorgio Prize and Pasinetti Award.

The Human Condition currently maintains a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[12]

References

  1. ↑ Orr, James Joseph. The Victim As Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan, p. 107.
  2. ↑ Kirkup, James (October 15, 1996). "Masaki Kobayashi: Obituary". London: The Independent.
  3. ↑ Grilli, Peter. "Interview with Masaki Kobayashi". Nihon Cine Art. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  4. 1 2 3 Kemp, Philip (9 September 2009). "The Human Condition: The Prisoner". Criterion. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Nakadai, Tatsuya. "Criterion Collection Interview with Tatsuya Nakadai". Found on the Criterion Collection's DVD release of The Human Condition.
  6. ↑ Shinoda, Masahiro. "Directors Guild of Japan video interview with Masaki Kobayashi, conducted by Masahiro Shinoda". Found on the Criterion Collection's DVD release of The Human Condition.
  7. ↑ "The Human Condition DVD Comparison". DVD Beaver. DVD Beaver. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  8. ↑ "The Criterion Collection: The Human Condition". Criterion. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
  9. ↑ "The Human Condition Blu-ray". Blu-ray.com. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
  10. ↑ Shipman, D. The Story of Cinema, Hodder and Stoughton 1984, p.984
  11. ↑ A.O. Scott "Cry the High-Minded Hero in Brutal Japanese-Occupied Manchuria", New York Times, 18 July 2008
  12. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes: The Human Condition". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster, Inc. Retrieved 15 March 2015.

External links

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