The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity

This is the second of a three-part movie (9.5 hours in total) covering one man's experience during World War II. This part takes place in 1943 in a military training unit, and later in 1945 in Manchuria, after the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria in August 1945. Part II is three hours in length.

Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) has now been drafted in 1943 into the Japanese military. He resists veterans' harsh treatment of new recruits even though he personally excels at physical fitness and target practice. He is deeply shaken by the suicide of a recruit named Obara (Kunie Tanaka) after brutal treatment. He is allowed one brief visit with his wife, Michiko (Michiyo Aratama). Later, in early 1945, Kaji, now a private first class, becomes a trainer of new recruits, including older men in their 40s. He is still harassed and sometimes beaten by five-year veterans because he refuses to treat his men harshly and continues to believe the war is based on false values.

In August 1945, Kaji and his platoon are sent to dig trenches to anticipate the Soviet attack on Manchuria. There is much despair as the men know that Okinawa has been lost. There is an extended battle scene where Kaji's rifle company in foxholes tries to fight 15 Soviet tanks and support troops.

There is much violence in Part II, but it is not graphic. The cinematography remains striking in black and white. Kaji several times states his opposition to the Japanese war machine. He is willing to fight to protect his men and himself, though he looks appalled the first time he kills a Soviet soldier. He also considers himself a murderer when forced to kill a comrade who has gone mad.

This is the 18th in my list of movies in which pacifists are primary characters. In Part II, Kaji is not strictly a pacifist, though he remains very anti-military.

A three-film saga chronicling the journey of a Japanese pacifist who continues to find his morals at crossroads with his duties to his country while trying to survive the oppressive regime & imperialist ideology of World War II-era Japan, The Human Condition is a mammoth undertaking that offers an honest observation of the uphill battle it always is for anyone trying to rise above a corrupt system and makes for an epic war drama that's grand in scope & exhaustive in narration.

The second part of the trilogy, Road to Eternity finds our protagonist now conscripted into the Japanese army after losing his exemption from military service due to his actions in the last film. Proving to be an excellent marksman with strong discipline, he bears witness to the cruelty & mistreatment from army vets and then incurs their wrath after reporting their malefactions to higher officials.

Co-written & directed by Masaki Kobayashi, there is a greater sense of danger at play here in this second chapter but at its core the plot continues to be about his struggle to stay true to his core beliefs. Facing harder challenges, physical abuse & endless punishments for slightest offences, he slowly begins to understand the difference between having ideals & acting on them by setting an example.

The story is told in two parts just like the previous entry, with the first one detailing his hardship at boot camp training and next one transporting him to the frontlines. Kobayashi also sheds critical light on the hazing culture that exists in the army in addition to corruption within the ranks itself but as before, it is Tatsuya Nakadai's committed showcase that keeps things glued together and helps us invest in the drama.

Overall, The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity may lack the steadier flow of its predecessor but it ventures into darker spaces and challenges the resilience of the human spirit by pushing our character's determination to test. The issues that plagued the first film are still here and the 3-hour runtime remains bothersome but the personal growth and better sense of right & wrong that our pacifist gains makes it a worthy sit in the end.

It's been a long time since I've seen "Ningen no joken II", the second of Kibiyashi's trilogy: "The Human Condition". One scene (and you'll know it if you see the film) is one of the most visually stunning and heart wrenching in movie history. The rest of the film isn't far behind it with Tatsuya Nakadai giving a brilliant performance playing a good man caught in the monstrous jaws of history. Deeply moving.

This second entry is subtitled "Road to Eternity," which is apt. Although thirty minutes shorter than the first Human Condition film, this second movie felt much longer and overall less engaging. The entire first half (Part 3 of the series, with each film having two parts) could have been condensed substantially and merged with Part 4. Throughout Part 3, we watch Kaji, our idealistic protagonist, as he deals with the violence and pettiness of military life. Except, he's not fighting the enemy; he's fighting the oppression of the more senior soldiers, who seem to delight in humiliating and physically beating the recruits. We see this over and over again. Although we watch Kaji attempt to live up to his humanistic ideals, the repetitiveness of Part 3 lacks much of the punch of the first movie and instead feels more like watching ninety minutes of hazing.

With Part 4, the movie slowly veers back to the qualities that made Human Condition I so engaging. Sent into the field, Kaji and his men prepare fortifications, receive news of Japan's defeat at Okinawa, and feel the war finally coming to them. Kaji, the pacifist, finds himself leading the riflemen in combat and vowing to stay alive and make it home to his wife, even as the distance between his ideals and his actions seems to grow.

It is these situational conflicts between Kaji's personal beliefs and the circumstances at hand that Human Condition I exploited so effectively, and the latter half of Human Condition II returns to form. It is a shame it takes the movie so very long to get there.

Kaji is sent to the Japanese army labeled of Red and is mistreated by the vets. Along his assignment, Kaji witnesses cruelties in the army; he revolts against the abusive treatment spent to the recruit Obara that commits suicide; he also sees his friend Shinjô Ittôhei defecting to the Russian border; and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Soviet tanks division.

"The Human Condition – Parts III & IV" is the first sequel of the anti- war masterpiece by Masaki Kobayashi. The story is impressively realistic and magnificently shot with top-notch camera work, giving the sensation of a documentary. But maybe the most impressive is to see the treatment of the Japanese military with their soldiers. If they treated their own compatriots with such brutality, imagine how the enemies would be treated? My vote is ten.

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