Kobayashi's films
embrace very large themes.
Back then, films by Japanese directors
only depicted dramas set in their immediate surroundings.
Even when the setting was broadened,
their films were still about being part of Japan:
The sadness or humor associated with that environment.
That was their range.
But delving into what was happening in the world
and what sort of position the Japanese played
wasn't explored in studio-produced films.
They were very much about manners and customs.
In the midst of all this, Kobayashi's films
all generated a dramatic pulse
that was oriented
toward a much larger world.
Because the grand design of his films was so great in scale,
they took on a different character from other Japanese directors' works.
In order to express that character,
he worked hard to depict small episodes
accurately and very realistically.
The time spent shooting to achieve that
didn't deter him at all.
His indifference to the studio's schedule
and his attention to detail
became the talk of the studio.
I've come to believe that that was
the essence of who he was as a filmmaker.
One of Kobayashi's larger themes
is Japan's defeat in the Pacific War.
After the defeat of 1945,
the Japanese had to deal with a devastated nation.
"How do we go on living amid these ruins?"
In a sense, a very moralistic soul searching
spread through Japan.
That's why Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution
forbids engaging in war and maintaining a regular army.
As a result, postwar Japan became like a kind of mollusk,
a society and nation without solid form or identity.
Kobayashi was born in 1916.
He was a member of the generation that, upon turning 20,
was sure to be drafted
and deployed to serve in the war.
Kobayashi had a university education,
and that's why he was recruited by the army,
where university graduates were eligible to become officers.
He was urged to take the exam to become an officer,
but he refused, instead remaining an enlisted man. ;
Private Masaki Kobayashi.
He staunchly refused to be promoted to officer.
He was resolved to share the burden of the war
as a common citizen.
Gomikawa, the author of the novel,
was the same way.
He was working at a very prestigious company in Manchuria
as one of its elite employees when the war broke out.
And Kaji, the film's lead character,
also remains a common soldier
and never becomes an officer.
Even as he gains seniority, he remains a common soldier
and refuses to be complicit with the military hierarchy.
He clearly represents those prewar leftist intellectuals
whose ideal society
was an egalitarian one based on socialism.
I think Kobayashi was also like them initially,
but having spent time in Okinawa
in an American prison camp,
he realized that what he experienced there
and the experiences of those who'd returned from Siberia
were vastly different.
Naturally, the cruelty carried out
by the Japanese military on the Chinese front
did nothing to dispel the notion that Kobayashi already held
that the war was a monumental crime.
But the experience of POWs in Soviet prisons
caused him to question
the fantasy of adopting socialism
to save postwar Japan.
I think this doubt began to grow in his mind around 1950.
Kobayashi's POW experience
definitely wounded his pride as a human being
more than his pride as a Japanese man.
To be put behind bars wounded his pride terribly.
As to why he wound up being detained in Okinawa,
I researched that for this interview.
The ship on which he was returning to Japan from China
met with an accident and drifted to Okinawa.
He was incarcerated by the American military there.
The absurdity of it all was in his mind when making this film later.
The Chinese forced laborers
were kept behind bars just like he was.
Their freedom of movement was taken away
against their will.
That sort of physical experience...
wouldn't ordinarily occur in the life of an individual.
Without that wartime experience,
he might have made films about family or societal issues in Japan.
But the irrationality of war
that he'd experienced
had to become one of the motifs of his films.
He couldn't resolve
his personal issues by himself.
That is, they couldn't be resolved philosophically.
They were the result of outside forces bearing down on him.
He needed to explore that as drama
to find his own sense of himself,
to find the causes of his own irrationality.
That would be a theme in his films throughout his life.
I think the film accurately depicted the wartime period overall.
When it was made,
nationalistic feeling among the Japanese
was not very strong.
The Japanese felt guilty about the war.
We had an aversion to war.
It wasn't a time when you could idealize war,
so it was the best time to accurately depict war in films.
If this film were made today, it wouldn't be the same film.
Since a film shows not only the physical aspect of things
but also the mental attitude of the time depicted in it,
in that sense, Gomikawa and Kobayashi's collaboration
faithfully presented
the view of war held by the Japanese at the time,
and also the two men's firsthand experiences of war.
The original novel is colossally long,
but Kobayashi was very faithful to it.
That's why he made such a long film.
I can hardly believe its length.
In a sense, it's a reflection of Kobayashi's determination
not to stray from the novel.
Gomikawa tells the story
of an educated young man's experience of war
and of what he struggles to achieve.
So it has the quality of a road movie.
In that sense,
the film takes the form of a road movie,
with lots of changes of scene
that never lose the viewer's attention.
For Kobayashi,
war was mainly about walking.
That and finding food.
Hunger and walking.
Walking in the sense of running away from something,
not in the sense of marching to the attack.
I think that must have been normal, everyday life
for those swept up in war's irrational forces,
unlike the experience of those running the war.
So in The Human Condition,
there's this grand dramatic design
in which this great current advances like a glacier,
and the cries of smaller pieces of ice crushed in the flow
give expressive power to the film.
This very precise realism is achieved
through Kobayashi's
attention to detail.
This film was born
as a result of World War II.
Similarly, as a result of World War I,
a masterpiece called The Grand Illusion was made by Jean Renoir.
I believe Kobayashi was influenced by that film.
I consider it Renoir's masterpiece.
It depicts the wartime experience of people of various nationalities.
From a lower-class laborer, played by Jean Gabin,
to aristocrats,
we see how people respond to war.
The Human Condition in a way also depicts
how different classes of people react to war.
But since everyone's in rags, class distinctions aren't apparent.
Even so, through their speech
we can discern their intelligence, class, and circumstances.
I think that that was handled brilliantly.
In that sense,
people no longer fight in wars wearing a bunch of medals.
But the kinds of suffering
that those soldiers experienced
can take place even in our modern, technological societies.
That is, a similar sort of pain
is often inflicted upon us.
In that sense, this film isn't simply a war movie.
It's also an allegory
about the societies that human beings create.
The film doesn't make
the commonplace distinction between good and evil.
It shows that any one of us might turn towards evil.
That anxiety is always present.
You never know which side -
The desire not to be the target of all that cruelty
rises within you as you watch the film.
Then you wonder whether the abuser might actually represent you.
There's a certain even-handedness to the way people are represented.
That's a big reason
that Kobayashi's film and Gomikawa's novel
were accepted by viewers and readers.
If it had just been presented as a case of good versus evil,
it would simply be an examination of nationalism,
without delving into the human condition at all.
Parts 1 and 2
depict the cruel treatment of the Chinese
forced to work in Japanese-owned coal mines.
We see the Japanese as evil
and the Chinese prisoners as good
in a relationship of opposing forces.
This scene depicting
the protesting Chinese mob...
really shows the sense of guilt toward the Chinese
borne by the Japanese of Kobayashi's generation.
We see these Chinese laborers vehemently resisting
their treatment by the Japanese.
No doubt those Chinese were Communists.
A scene like this hadn't been seen in Japanese films before.
In that sense, The Human Condition
was the first film by a Japanese director
to take an objective stance
in portraying how the Chinese viewed Japan.
Then, from there,
from asking us as Japanese people
to find a way to live humanely as human beings...
the film depicts people who become traitors or spies
or use strong-arm tactics.
In depicting these types of people,
Kobayashi shows their weaknesses and sadness as human beings
beneath their strong exteriors.
And the actors portraying them really understand that well.
In wartime,
any ordinary man could suddenly become a tyrant
within the confines of military barracks.
It's horrific how ordinary people became so inhumane and cruel.
It shows that
before the crimes Japan committed against the Chinese,
the Japanese army itself was mired
in an extremely masochistic
culture of victimization.
Militarism and imperialism spawned that culture,
which actually predated Japan's war crimes.
Kobayashi accurately depicted that reality
in The Human Condition.
Perhaps that was the most important theme addressed in this film.
In that sense, Parts 3 and 4 present us
with the issue that most deserves our reflection.
I think Parts 5 and 6
are truly the work of a poet.
Kobayashi had to deal with a huge handicap back then,
because the Japanese had neither the money
nor the freedom to travel outside Japan for a location shoot,
so he had to shoot the Manchuria scenes in Hokkaido.
Since Kobayashi had been a POW in Beijing,
he had a vision of the sky
over China,
but the sky above Hokkaido didn't look like that.
The clouds there looked too peaceful.
So he waited for months to shoot the scene of a cloudy dawn
until just the right clouds appeared.
The cameraman, Yoshio Miyajima,
was a believer in Soviet socialism.
So Kobayashi was working
with a hardcore communist for a cinematographer,
and I imagined he might have been influenced by him.
But the film's tone becomes increasingly anti-Stalinist.
In a scene near the border of the Soviet Union and Manchuria,
there's a discussion about an ideal land beyond the border.
That's rejected as too naive
after what they've seen the Soviet army do.
We see retreating Japanese soldiers discussing those things.
One very distinctive thing in the film
is the depiction of the Soviet Union
through the portrayal of Kaji as a POW in a Soviet prison.
The film presents the Soviet Union
in a very clear, unsentimental manner.
We see a portrait of Stalin,
and I think it's the first time that a critical view
of the Soviet Union was presented in Japanese cinema.
This deep doubt concerning Soviet socialism,
for Japanese intellectuals in the 1950s,
who weren't as exposed to reports on Stalinism
as Western intellectuals were,
was like taking a huge leap into a different world.
These soldiers' firsthand knowledge
makes them skeptical
of this idealized view of the Soviet Union.
It's like, "I doubt, therefore I am."
This quasi-Cartesian philosophy
is an important idea in the third film.
And lastly...
the thing that stands out most when you watch this film -
The other day I searched on the Internet
to find out how the film was seen by young people today
as preparation for this interview.
Kaji's dedication to his wife Michiko
is criticized as unrealistic today,
and the feeling that love was depicted too romantically
is one of the opinions held by young people today.
But that's what I myself felt back when the film was released.
Kobayashi and Gomikawa were both born in 1916.
The Japanese before World War II were very romantic.
French films had really captured
the hearts and minds of intellectuals and students.
Films by Julien Duvivier, Jacques Feyder,
and Jean Renoir were very popular in Japan back then.
So in that sense,
Kaji's unwavering love for Michiko
seems to undercut the film's antiwar message
with a message about the beauty of womanhood.
And I thought, "Are you kidding me?"
The Japanese of my generation felt
that love should be treated more erotically.
But the film shows a human being transcending eroticism.
If the film showed a double suicide, that would be a different matter.
But what Kaji was seeking was an answer to the question
whether Japan's imperialism and militarism were one and the same.
In the end, we see him wandering,
futilely searching for Michiko.
His wandering is not a rejection of war per se,
but rather a denunciation of the militarism
that got in the way of his romantic love.
So the film is more a tragedy about a man
who could not fulfill his love,
and at the same time a paean,
a song of praise, to man's love for woman.
So to say that the story is unrealistic or too romantic
is a view of people like my generation
who grew up in an unsentimental world.
But Kobayashi's commitment to such romantic ideals
is something we don't have the right to criticize, I believe.
War movies ordinarily tell the story
from one side's perspective and sense of justice.
But Japan's losing the war
put it in a position to accurately see the situation.
It's the victor who can't see things as they really are.
They can see their own side's perspective,
but to see the defeated side with sympathy
requires a great deal of forbearance and imagination.
The winning side doesn't record the defeated side's perspective.
Paradoxically, in defeat one gains the fuller picture.
Through the intellects of Kobayashi and Gomikawa,
Japan's defeat was depicted
not through the perspective of nationalists,
but through that of men who tried to accept the defeat responsibly.
That's why The Human Condition
shows to the people of the world
the senselessness of war.
In doing so, it suggests that even in that senselessness,
through one's rationality and the strength of one's spirit,
it's possible to retain one's humanity.
I don't believe that anyone's behavior
during the war was actually honorable,
but by presenting another way of life as a model,
this film is a great source of encouragement.