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Road to Eternity: War, Endless War

Road to Eternity: War, Endless War

Last updated on: June 20, 2026 at 2:50 pm by Chase Padusniak

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Road to Eternity: War, Endless War 2026-06-20T14:50:26-04:00 Chase Padusniak

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The film’s poster
Source: Wikimedia
Fair use

I continue to make my way through Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth The Human Condition trilogy (1959-1961), based on the as-yet-untranslated novel by Junpei Gomikawa. Here, I will focus on the second part, which brings us to a theme we human beings seem never to learn about: war.

In the first film, Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) worked as mining labor supervisor in Manchuria, navigating endless ethical dilemmas to avoid being drafted. Of course, for all his work he gets the ultimate reward. Now, he finds himself in the Kwantung Army.

What Kobayashi makes very clear is that the military is not so different from laboring in Japanese slave mines. Everything is physical violence. Beatings are regular and those giving them remain indifferent to the human suffering they create. Even after another recruit commits suicide in a scene that must have influenced Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), Kaji’s complaints fall on deaf ears. Everything is deference.

The irony is that the Japanese military’s code of conduct does not allow these extraordinary beatings. The brass doesn’t care, because, as Kaji learns, human codes exist to restrict, but the key is precisely their purpose. The Japanese military has a code to break recruits; when the code fails to do this, it too must be cast aside.

In this sense, The Human Condition returns to a word used to describe Kaji in the first film: humanist. Kaji has sympathies for the communist cause. He even considers defecting to the Soviets at one point (or is it Mao’s PLA?). His original report from No Greater Love (1959) stood out for its “Leftism” and commitment to the dignity of even the oppressed Chinese and Manchu miners. But Kaji’s concern is not ultimately political.

Indeed, his main point of interest—and that of the film (we will see more of this in the next entry)—is humanity itself, the feelings we experience and the ways we navigate the world around us.

This, in particular, makes the military and its mode of training such an important focal point for Kobayashi’s film. The purpose of a modern military is to remake human beings. They must be disciplined, changed, in a sense—erased. To work as a group in combat means losing one’s sense of personal danger. Only by losing oneself can one become a soldier.

The Japanese military, with its extreme nationalist underpinning, proves fecund ground for making this point. But the beauty of Kobayashi’s film has to do with its placing Kaji, who stands for the opposite of all this but who ultimately tries his best to navigate its structures, at its center. Kaji wants the military to at least abide by its own rules. In his mind, if he and his fellows have to live through this experience—which they must because they value their lives and those of their loved ones—then the organization under which they serve must at least be livable. Unfortunately for him, his detour through the Kwantung Army proves that human beings can create structures indifferent to the human spirit and to any hope for a better future.

There is also an inversion at play here. Originally, Kaji was a middle manager. He commanded even as he endured the insubordination of those underneath him. His own boss had a relatively light touch. He squirmed under this arrangement, but he undeniably enjoyed a certain prestige and station. Now, he finds himself little better than an insect so far as his country is concerned. Kaji takes orders; he endures and witnesses beatings, and there’s little he can do about it.

The first film offered viewers a window onto the ethical dilemmas faced by one with power. Here, we have the dilemmas faced by one crushed by power, a power Kaji previously served (at least formally).

In other words, The Human Condition continues to deliver on its promise—we will see the human condition from as many angles as possible within one overarching narrative. Based on how this entry ends, the human spirit does not look like its in for a good time in volume three. To train as a soldier means to train to die. And God knows, we get a lot of that in Road to Eternity (1959).

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