“The Human Condition"

There is a 1959-61 black and white film called The Human Condition directed by Masaki Kobayashi and is 571 minutes in length. That is 9 hours and 51 minutes. The duration of this film makes it intolerable to most audiences, to the 1960 international audience as well as today’s film audience that has finally adjusted to the three hour film, however action packed, this is not. What is more, this film becomes beyond intolerable to audiences of the past and audiences of today, it becomes impossible. Nevertheless, it might be the singular most important film to humanity ever made, and for me I would remove the “might” and assert unequivocally this is THE most important film to humanity in our history. It’s impossibility stems from the story. A young Japanese administrator on the cusp of marriage to a wife he adores immensely is suddenly called to China to serve as a mining labor camp administrator for Chinese prisoners. This summons is utter devastation but there is no choice.

In this position, Kaji proves himself very valuable with innovative solutions etc, until he begins to notice more closely the treatment of the Chinese by the Japanese. Their labor is ceaseless coal mining interrupted only by sleep and he witnesses their less than canine treatment; perpetual beatings of weak men scarcely fit for any kind of labor, the hours that are ridiculously long, and lack of proper nourishment. Asserting his authority to do justice for these men, suddenly, all eyes of the administration are on him, he is labeled socialist, the lowest kind of weakling to the Japanese. When he refuses to behead a prisoner who has been accused unfairly of striking an officer, now accused of public insubordination, the worst happens and he receives his call as an Imperial Army soldier at the front, still in China, a call that brings the harshest conditions imaginable, treatment from superiors one rank higher of openly encouraged hostility of perpetual and condoned beatings, and every soldier at the front knows his position will ultimately mean death.

More than the continual beatings that reduce his face to a pulp, and public humiliations as he is still branded a socialist and a coward, his every spare thought receives its peace while resting with Her in his mind. He can hear her haunting voice calling to him, he can see her form and is powerless. His love is the only reality he has, it is the only thing truly his own. It is all that is real to him. All else is abstract and horribly ugly. He can endure the physical hardship greater than any soldier but his greatest suffering is being apart from his one and only happiness.

His bravery and strength precipitate a promotion in rank and he is given a commission to lead a team of soldiers across enemy lines. This is incredibly dangerous and ultimately they are caught by Russians and the group is put in a work camp. There is nothing to be said of the food they are given and the Japanese soldiers take turns rummaging at night through the piles of refuse of the Russians to collect potato peelings, bones, anything organic. It is bitter cold and Kaji has made a cover out of sackcloth. An argument with a Russian officer over this leads to the worst beating yet and Kaji is close to death. When he awakes he decides to escape.

He wastes no time and he and three others escape quickly and easily. They cross vast plains and harsh terrain and the one factor that cannot be avoided and is keeping them from safely reaching home which is not too distant is the complete lack of food of any kind. These travelers who have been living on potato peelings and bone are starving to death. Three give in and desert Kaji to find some kind of civilization. Kaji in his tremendous strength marches through the snow grueling step by step. From all around him can be heard Her enchanting and haunting voice calling to him and loving him and carrying him with its serene and melodious rhapsody. He cannot make it to her but she is everywhere in his reality throughout his being and taking a laborious step in the snow, cloths in rags in this frozen terrain, the formidable, courageous and ever enduring man that was Kaji collapses in a heap to the ground dead.

After the film finished I was left in dark silence for perhaps an hour or more. There was nothing that I did not understand, everything made perfect sense to me, the film had to be as it was and there was no other way and it surprised me that I felt this way, that Kaji had to die, that they could not be reunited, that his death redeemed his suffering and their reunion would have made a mockery of it.

Kaji was entirely selfless and bore the extremities of physical suffering as he transcended it. He never complained. When the officers habitually smacked their gloved hand back and forth across his face he took it unflinchingly. He did not acknowledge his suffering as such, to him it was almost something not real, something to be endured, yes, but real, no. Everything, Every single thing in his life that mattered was about the happiness he once had and believed he could have once again with her. Their happiness was real, they were real. This was his transcendent state. Everything else was false, the world was false, preventing happiness, deterring spiritual enlightenment, as is the way of the world, according to the Japanese and Zen Buddhism and just as we believe as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, we must not only endure the falseness of the world, we must transcend our suffering, just like Kaji.

Kaji seemed blind and immune to every obstacle. His sources of strength seemed to grow as he experienced more and more hardship, this being familiar to us in the concept of progression and what we know as the refiner’s fire. Never in the film did he appear so mighty, so strong, so warrior-like than in the final scene, his strong flesh showing through his shredded garment, steps that were heavy and decisive, and the eyes of a man so utterly focused on his objective that in his reality there simply was nothing else. This is immense equanimity of mind.

Zen Buddhism, like Mormonism, says that life is suffering and must be endured to the end. The world is but a delusion. The world is most certainly not reality, not close to it, it is a false state and the Zen Buddhist does his best to create order and balance, a state of harmony where peace might dwell in an existence that is essentially chaos. We believe no differently. For Kaji to fight from the beginning and as his obstacles became more seemingly impenetrable, he or any man could have given up hope at any time, given in to the chaos but Kaji fought and fought till his last step.

The beauty that is personified in these last steps is immense. It is Christ-like. His journey had been so tremendous and now, out in the farest reaches of a snowy distant plain, he gives his life for the one he loves, he, Kaji, alone, near frozen, unseen, unobserved, with no hope for reward or recompense. He did it because her love was his reality. Weather or not she would ever know, and of course she would not, the massive injustices and the brutality he bore in her name he did not care or give thought to, but still he did it because her love was his reality and all that was his.

For those reading and not thinking of Christ and his sacrifice, think of Christ and his sacrifice. Think of how alone he was in Gethsemane with no one there to comfort and support him, he being utterly alone. Think of his singular reality that propelled him on, what more was there to it than his measureless love for each one of us that caused him, like Kaji, to transcend the world, to transcend suffering? We might transcend our suffering and experience that very true and very real state of being that emanates from our savior, that state of divine existence and utter selflessness that is the pure love of Christ and is our true reality.