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A Soldier’s Prayer: All Good Things

A Soldier’s Prayer: All Good Things

Last updated on: June 23, 2026 at 5:08 pm by Chase Padusniak

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A Soldier’s Prayer: All Good Things 2026-06-23T17:08:38-04:00 Chase Padusniak

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The film’s poster.
Source: Wikimedia
Fair use

And so, we have the third entry in The Human Condition trilogy (1959-1961). This is, by far, the most soul crushing entry, because it looks at the effects of war straight on. It benefits, I think, from not sensationalizing. Not that bravery and horror are foreign to war (they absolutely are not). But the grim reality is that war and its aftermath are grinding and harsh, rooted in unsexy facts like famine, disease, isolation, and fear. This is, Kobayashi seems to suggest, also part of the human condition.

And we should pause to acknowledge that each of these is indeed a foundational part of human experience. Some of what I find so captivating about the Abrahamic story of the fall is its emphasis on the broken condition of our world. There is Eden, the possibility or potential for happiness that can never be totally erased, though also not fully achieved. On the other hand, there is concupiscence, our ever-present, though waning and waxing, draw toward infinitely justifiable ills. This geopolitical reality means we must fight. That fighting will bring suffering. No matter how righteous the cause or theoretically correct the merits.

Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) is done with the war. It, of course, is not done with him. Left with only a couple stragglers after the devastation of his unit, he tries to wander back home to his wife. But these are the wastes of the borderland between China and Russia; his goal is the comparatively fertile land of Manchuria. The environs crawl with Soviet soldiers, armed peasant militias, and weary farmers. Certainly, no one feels charitably toward the Japanese, especially not soldiers.

His wanderings involve suffering from the small to the soul-crushing (though it’s all soul crushing in the end). We see daring raids, contrition-laden killings, complaining civilians, starvation, and all manner of human horror. As with the other two entries, the difficulty of human ethical choices under strain remains a primary concern. And how could it not be: this is The Human Condition.

What’s perhaps most affecting about these ever-renewing episodes of pilgrimage toward home is their focus on the psychology of the defeated. People join and leave the caravan throughout, and each lays bare a different reaction to the “end of the war” or “the end of Japan” (as some believe it to be). Some are in denial and stick to their codes, military or otherwise. Some, like Kaji, accept that the only thing that matters is surviving to see a new day with those one loves. Still others react with pained confusion and bestial rage. Are these reactions irrational? What does rational even mean when you’re starving, spiritually broken, and unsure where to go?

Kaji and the Communists

These philosophical quandaries continue when Kaji finds himself amidst actually existing socialists. While he has never been a committed communist in the vein of some of his friends through the trilogy, he believes their system to be better. At minimum, socialism expresses something more like his ideals—a freer, less ground down, more dynamic humanity that, well, actually cares about life.

The film balances this encounter with the Soviets better than perhaps any other I have seen. It would be easy to show the Soviets to be crass hypocrites who believe in nothing (see 1950s American films about communists, in which they are nothing but barely veiled gangsters). It would also be easy to lionize and idealize Stalin’s Russia, as is done in many early Maoist propaganda movies. Kobayashi (and presumably the novel behind the film) do not tack so simply to either extreme.

In some ways, the Soviets do seem genuinely better. Officers stand up to soldiers and reprimand them for physical violence toward prisoners. Their punishments seem more humane, if still rough. At the same time, however, Kaji witnesses them commit atrocities. He sees a certain venality in their willingness to accept the rank and privileges of captured Japanese officers, no matter how crass and cruel they may have been before losing the war.

But even this reality reveals an even more complex element at play: the necessary diversity of human languages and cultures. So much of Kaji’s suffering at the end of the film stems from his not knowing Russian. In the first movie, he learned Chinese well enough to communicate directly with the laborers working under him. But the Soviets have only just gotten to Manchuria, and they—with a few exceptions—are not in a position to learn Japanese, which is not the language of the land anyway. Kaji is thus reliant on interpreters, who are capable of mistakes, ill will, and all manner of other complicating factors.

A Soldier’s Prayer, in other words, is almost a perfect film about the truth of war, the fissures in humanity it exposes and the suffering it causes. Watch the trilogy.

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