Movie Essay About The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer
The Human Condition is a Japanese epic movie set of three made somewhere in the range of 1959 and 1961. The cinema reflects the six-volume novel distributed from 1956 to 1958 by Junpei Gomikawa. The collection of three follows the life of Kaji, a Japanese radical and communist, as he attempts to get by in the extremist and abusive universe of World War II-period Japan (Wilson, 159). He changes from being a work camp manager to an Imperial Army officer and a possible Soviet POW. Continually attempting to transcend a shady system, he discovers on numerous occasions that his ethics are a hindrance as opposed to a preferred position. This text gives a clear explanation of the history and analysis of the film; The Human Condition, particularly A Soldier’s Prayer.
The first set of the film, No Greater Love was published in 1959. It opens with Kaji wedding his darling Michiko, notwithstanding his doubts about what’s to come. The couple, at that point, moves to colossal mining activity in Japanese-colonized Manchuria, where Kaji is a working chief relegated to a workforce of Chinese detainees. He attempts and eventually neglects to accommodate his humanistic standards with the hard truth of constrained work in a royal framework. The film closes with him being drafted to military assistance, all together for his bosses to get rid of his upsetting nearness at the Labor camp. The subsequent movie, Road to Eternity, was also published in 1959. Kaji has now been recruited into the Japanese Kwantung Army, having lost his exclusion from military help by shielding Chinese detainees from the low discipline (Edward, 66). Under doubt of radical feelings, he is given the hardest obligations in his military enlisting class despite his phenomenal marksmanship and solid encampment discipline.
However, his better half Michiko argues for comprehension in a letter to his commanding officer. Later, she pays Kaji a profoundly unique visit to his military office to show her affection and solidarity. Kaji considers escaping over the front with his companion Shinjo, who is correspondingly under doubt because of his brother’s capture for socialist exercises. Doubting that abandonment will prompt opportunity, and devoted to his significant other, he finally decides to proceed with military work despite his hardships. Kaji requests disciplinary action from his bosses for PFC Yoshida. This action occurs when his fellow murders himself after difficulties from home, are intensified by harassment from other soldiers. He afterward refuses to safeguard the horrendous officer when the Yoshida was not punished; the two men are caught in a sand trap while in a quest for Shinjo and at last held onto the chance to abandon. Kaji is discharged from hospitalization associated with the sand trap occurrence and is shipped to the front with his unit.
Kaji is requested to lead a gathering of trainees and elevated to private first class. He accepted this task with the condition that his men will be isolated from the veteran artillerymen. They practice extreme pitilessness as discipline for the small offenses (Whitman). Despite Kaji’s relationship with Second Lieutenant Kageyama, he is often beaten by the veterans for the sake of his men. He is sent together with his men on a month-long channel burrowing work detail because of continued battles with the veterans and demoralization by the fall of Okajima. Their work is hindered by a Soviet armed force invasion leading to substantial Japanese losses and the passing of Kageyama. However, Kaji endures the fight though he was forced to kill an enraged Japanese fighter to keep Soviet officers from finding his position. The film closes with Kaji shouting, “I’m a monster, but I’m still alive!” while running for other Japanese survivors.
The last set of the film, A Soldier’s Prayer was published in 1961. Kaji and a few friends try to evade catch by Soviet powers and discover the Kwantung army remnants in South Manchuria. However, Kaji is tired of the battle and leaves any affectation of rejoining the military. Instead, he leads individual troopers and refugees as they flee the combat area back to their homes. Later they lost in thick woodland where most of them died from poisonous mushrooms, hunger and suicide. Kaji and the exiles met the Japanese armed forces troops who denied them food as they were emerging out of the forest. Continuing further south, they saw a loaded farmhouse trapped by Chinese laborer warriors. These partisans kill a whore shown grace by Kaji, and he promises to battle them instead to getaway. Kaji and the group are almost murdered, but they escape to a flaring wheat field. He then experiences a gathering of a group of fifty Japanese armies attempting to continue the battle in collusion with Chiang Kai-shek; to be upheld by American powers in the war against Russian-sponsored Communist Chinese (Lewin). However, Kaji dismisses this policy associating it with failure. Kaji and the Japanese soldiers are headed to keep moving, looking for his wife and other women. Later, he gives up to Soviet powers when the camp is attacked.
Kaji and his fellows oppose the Japanese officials who collaborate with the Soviet powers. This opposition was a result of the treatment they received when caught by the Red Army; echoes the savagery distributed to the Chinese in the first film (Viola). Kaji is regarded as a saboteur and decided by a Soviet court to brutal work as such opposition adding up to looking over the Russians’ trash for pieces of nourishment and wearing gunnysacks to shield them from a progressively colder climate. He is frustrated with the conditions in the camp. There was no way of communicating with the Russian officials for sympathy. When Terada is headed to demise by cruel treatment from collaborating officer Kirihara, Kaji chooses to execute the man and get away from the camp alone. He eventually capitulated to cold and deceases in tremendous winter wasteland longing to find his wife and molested as a Japanese villain.
In conclusion, The Human Condition is a Japanese movie series made up of three film sets made between 1959 and 1961. It shows the lifeline of a Japanese socialist known as Kaji, who tries to survive in the abusive and corrupt world in Japan during World War II. He works as a camp manager, proceeds to be an Imperial Army Officer, and eventually a Soviet POW. As he attempted to be above the corrupt system, he discovers that his ethics are more of hindrances rather than the preferred position. Despite his efforts in the fight, he dies with the abuse of being a homeless beggar and without finding his beloved wife.
References
Drea, Edward J. “Missing Intentions: Japanese Intelligence and the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria, 1945.” The Journal of Military History 48, no. 2 (1984): 66.
Lewin, Moshe. “Russian peasants and soviet power-a study of collectivization.” Russian peasants and soviet power-a study of collectivization. (1968).
Viola, Lynne, ed. Contending with Stalinism: Soviet power and popular resistance in the 1930s. Cornell University Press, 2018.
Whitman, Walt. “The Artilleryman’s Vision.” Common Core Assesment, Level10.
Wilson, Sandra. “Rethinking the 1930s and the’15-Year War’in Japan.” Japanese Studies 21, no. 2 (2001): 155-164.