Masaki Kobayashi

The Human Condition

The Human Condition

This mammoth humanist drama by Masaki Kobayashi is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three installments of two parts each, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji—played by the Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai—from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet prisoner of war. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals to be an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of Japan’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.

Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1959
  • 575 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 2.39:1
  • Japanese
  • Spine #480

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural (Parts 1–4) and 4.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio (Parts 5 and 6) soundtracks
  • Excerpt from a 1993 Directors Guild of Japan interview with director Masaki Kobayashi, conducted by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda
  • Interview from 2009 with actor Tatsuya Nakadai
  • Appreciation of Kobayashi and The Human Condition from 2009 featuring Shinoda
  • Trailers
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Philip Kemp

    Cover design by Sarah Habibi, calligraphy by Akiko Crowther

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural (Parts 1–4) and 4.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio (Parts 5 and 6) soundtracks
  • Excerpt from a 1993 Directors Guild of Japan interview with director Masaki Kobayashi, conducted by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda
  • Interview from 2009 with actor Tatsuya Nakadai
  • Appreciation of Kobayashi and The Human Condition from 2009 featuring Shinoda
  • Trailers
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Philip Kemp

    Cover design by Sarah Habibi, calligraphy by Akiko Crowther
The Human Condition
Cast
Tatsuya Nakadai
Kaji
Michiyo Aratama
Michiko (Parts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6)
Chikage Awashima
Jin Tung Fu (Parts 1 and 2)
Ineko Arima
Yang Chun Lan (Parts 1 and 2)
Keiji Sada
Kageyama (Parts 1 and 4)
So Yamamura
Okishima (Parts 1 and 2)
Akira Ishihama
Chen (Parts 1 and 2)
Shinji Nambara
Kao (Parts 1 and 2)
Seiji Miyaguchi
Wang Heng Li (Parts 1 and 2)
Toru Abe
Sergeant Watai (Parts 1 and 2)
Masao Mishima
Manager Kuroki (Parts 1 and 2)
Eitaro Ozawa
Okazaki (Parts 1 and 2)
Koji Mitsui
Furuya (Parts 1 and 2)
Akitake Kono
Captain Kono (Parts 1 and 2)
Nobuo Nakamura
Head Office Chief (Parts 1 and 2)
Kyu Sazanka
Cho Meisan (Parts 1 and 2)
Kokinji Katsura
Sasa (Part 3)
Jun Tatara
Hino (Part 3)
Michio Minami
Yoshida (Part 3)
Kei Sato
Shinjo (Part 3)
Kunie Tanaka
Obara (Part 3)
Taketoshi Naito
Tange (Part 3, 5, and 6)
Yusuke Kawazu
Terada (Parts 4, 5, and 6)
Susumu Fujita
Naruto (Part 4)
Minoru Chiaki
Onodera (Part 4)
Shoji Yasui
Officer aspirant (Part 4)
Fumio Watanabe
Staff officer (Part 4)
Tamao Nakamura
Refugee (Part 5)
Chishu Ryu
Old man in refugee camp (Part 6)
Hideko Takamine
Old woman in refugee camp (Part 6)
Kyoko Kishida
Tatsuko (Part 5)
Reiko Hitomi
Umeko (Part 5)
Keijiro Morozumi
Hironaka (Part 5)
Koji Kiyomura
Hikida (Part 5)
Nobuo Kaneko
Kirihara (Part 5 and 6)
Ed Keene
Russian officer (Part 6)
Ronald Self
Chabayev (Part 6)
Credits
Director
Masaki Kobayashi
Producer
Shigeru Wakatsuki
Screenplay
Zenzo Matsuyama
Screenplay
Masaki Kobayashi
Based on the novel by
Jumpei Gomikawa
Production managers
Tatsuo Osawa
Production managers
Zempei Moriyama
Cinematography
Yoshio Miyajima
Lighting
Takashi Kato
Lighting
Akira Aomatsu
Editing
Keiichi Uraoka
Music
Chuji Kinoshita
Sound
Hideo Nishizaki
Art direction
Kazue Hirataka

Current

Master Strokes
Master Strokes
Akiko Crowther, a grand master of Japanese calligraphy, created the title treatment for our release of The Human Condition. This is the original design she sent us. —Sarah Habibi, art director
The Human Condition: The Prisoner
The Human Condition: The Prisoner

Masaki Kobayashi’s towering antiwar saga embodies the postwar Japanese conscience by tracing the moral degradation of a principled dissident.

By Philip Kemp

Thoughts and Words Won’t Save Us: One Scene from The Human Condition

One Scene

Thoughts and Words Won’t Save Us: One Scene from The Human Condition
When I first heard about The Human Condition (1959–61), I was already familiar with director Masaki Kobayashi’s irreverent Harakiri (1962), a favorite film of mine where samurai are scum of the earth and honor is equivalent to dirt. I immediately…

By Emma Ríos

Explore

Tatsuya Nakadai

Actor

Tatsuya Nakadai
Tatsuya Nakadai

A dynamic, handsome star who got his start in Japanese cinema during its 1950s golden age, the Tokyo-born Tatsuya Nakadai defies easy categorization. He is convincing whether playing a mercenary lone wolf or a heartsick love interest, a hero or a villain, in a sleek suit or samurai robes, and just as comfortable blending in to an ensemble as commanding a spotlight. The stage-trained actor was discovered, while working as a shop clerk, in 1953 by director Masaki Kobayashi, who promptly cast him in a tiny role in the controversial drama The Thick-Walled Room; a year later, he was given a walk-on part in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. After a major breakthrough as a young yakuza in Kobayashi’s Black River, Nakadai was on his way to becoming one of Japan’s busiest actors; he would work several more times with both Kobayashi and Kurosawa, as well as Hideo Gosha, Kon Ichikawa, Mikio Naruse, Kihachi Okamoto, and Hiroshi Teshigahara—the cream of the nation’s crop of film artists. Nakadai, still acting into his eighties, is perhaps most often recalled for his ravaging performances in Kobayashi’s epic war drama The Human Condition (1959–61) and Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), in which he embodies unforgettably a cinematic King Lear for the ages.