The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity

The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959) is the second chapter of Masaki Kobayashi's monumental Japanese anti-war cycle, available to watch online on iFILM. Running 178 minutes, it picks up where the first film left off: Kaji, a pacifist conscript played by Tatsuya Nakadai, has been forced into the Imperial Japanese Army and is now discovering that military life is as brutal toward its own men as it is toward the enemy.

Kaji is labelled a leftist from the start, which puts him under permanent suspicion. When a soldier in his unit is tortured for an attempted defection, Kaji intervenes — and nearly destroys his own position in the process. His friend Shinjô goes further and crosses over to the Soviet side entirely. The film moves toward a final engagement against Soviet armour that Kaji's unit has no realistic chance of surviving, and Kobayashi films it without the slightest concession to spectacle.

Kobayashi completed all six parts of The Human Condition between 1959 and 1961 — roughly nine hours of total running time, adapted from Junpei Gomikawa's six-volume novel. For its era, the series was an act of cultural defiance: a Japanese film presenting the Pacific War not as sacrifice but as institutional cruelty. Stream The Human Condition II online on iFILM.