The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity

Kaji is drafted into the Japanese army and branded Red by a system that rewards obedience over humanity. He endures harsh discipline from seasoned veterans and becomes a witness to the cruelties embedded in military life. As he carries out his duties, he dares to speak up in defense of a recruit named Obara, challenging the abuse he sees at the unit level. A friend, Shinjo Ittohei, flees toward the border with the Russians, testing the limits of loyalty and conscience. When he is sent to the front, he faces a brutal clash with a superior enemy tank division, a confrontation that forces him to weigh duty against the costs of war. Its quiet moments reveal the price of silence.

Directed by Masaki Kobayashi and released in 1959, this middle chapter of Kobayashi's The Human Condition trilogy adapts Junpei Gomikawa's novel. It sharpens the examination of wartime ideology, showing how ordinary men contend with power, fear, and moral tests today.

Box office data for this title is not widely documented, and it did not become a mainstream blockbuster today. The film is primarily discussed in scholarly critiques, retrospectives, and festival circuits where its artistic significance is emphasized in film history.

The film is celebrated for its rigorous realism and its unflinching look at how war corrodes judgment, loyalty, and humanity. Kobayashi blends intimate character moments with expansive battle tableaux, shaping postwar antiwar cinema in Japan and influencing directors who seek ethical complexity over melodrama for future filmmakers to study globally.

Critics praised its stark portrayal of soldiers, moral ambiguity, and the costs of obedience on the individual and the collective. The film probes themes of dehumanization, the clash between duty and conscience, and how fear, hierarchies, and peer pressure corrode ethical judgment under the pressures of modern total war today.