The Human Condition (人間の條件, Ningen no jōken) is a trilogy of Japanese epic war drama films co-written and directed by Masaki Kobayashi, based on the novel of the same name by Junpei Gomikawa.

The Criterion Collection website summarises the plot of the film thus: "The Human Condition follows the journey of the well-intentioned, yet naïve Kaji who transitions from being a labor camp supervisor to an Imperial Army soldier and eventually Soviet POW.

To gain exemption from military service, he moves his wife to a large mining operation in Japanese-colonized Manchuria, where he serves as a labor chief assigned to a workforce of Chinese prisoners.

Kaji aggravates the camp bureaucracy by implementing humane practices to improve both labor conditions and productivity, clashing with foremen, administrators, and the Kenpeitai military police.

Ultimately his efforts to grant autonomy to the POWs are undermined by scheming officials, resulting in the electrocution of several prisoners and the beheading of others accused of attempted escape.

Under suspicion of leftist sympathies, Kaji is assigned the toughest duties in his military recruiting class despite his excellent marksmanship and strong barracks discipline.

His wife Michiko pleads for understanding in a letter to his commanding officer and later pays Kaji a highly unorthodox visit to his military facility to express her love and solidarity.

While Yoshida is not disciplined, Kaji helps to seal his fate by refusing to rescue the vicious soldier when both men are trapped in quicksand while in pursuit of Shinjo, who finally seized the opportunity to desert.

Eventually, Kaji and a group of Japanese soldiers, whose number has grown to fifteen, fight through Russian patrols and find an encampment of women and old men who seek their protection.

Captured by the Red Army and subjected to treatment that echoes the violence meted out to the Chinese in the first film, Kaji and his protégé Terada resist the Japanese officers who run their work camp in cooperation with the Soviet occupiers.

While such resistance amounts to no more than picking through the Russians' garbage for scraps of food and wearing gunnysacks to protect them from increasingly colder weather, Kaji is branded a saboteur and judged by a Soviet tribunal to harsh labor.

With a corrupt translator and no other means of talking to the Russian officers with whom he feels ideological sympathies, Kaji becomes increasingly disillusioned by conditions in the camp and with Communist orthodoxy.

Still dreaming of finding his wife and abused as a worthless beggar and as a "Japanese devil" by the Chinese peasants of whom he begs mercy, Kaji eventually succumbs to the cold and dies in the vast winter wasteland covered in snow.

Due to the subject matter directly criticizing the actions of Japan during World War II, the studio was initially unenthusiastic about the film and only relented when Kobayashi threatened to quit.

[10] While the trilogy earned considerable controversy at the time of its release in Japan, The Human Condition was critically acclaimed, won several international awards, and established Masaki Kobayashi as one of the most important Japanese directors of the generation.

[12] Critic Philip Kemp, in his essay written for The Criterion Collection's release of the trilogy, argues that while "the film suffers from its sheer magnitude [and] from the almost unrelieved somberness of its prevailing mood ...

[6] In 2021, David Mermelstein of Wall Street Journal writes positively of the trilogy: "What's astonishing is the way that Kobayashi juggles the complicated narrative, with its panoply of incidents and significant characters (friends, nemeses and everything in between), so that clarity is never compromised".