It is rare when an episode of national history can be interpreted without the burden of illusions, both obsolete and nostalgic. And this is perhaps one of the great strengths of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition, a nine-hour epic about Japan's occupation of China during the Second World War. The trilogy begins with an attack on the inhuman practices within the Japanese Army and ends with a bitter denunciation of Stalinism by the would-be-socialist hero, Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai), a Japanese soldier who has confronted the horrid face of war and found it unyielding. In grand Dostoyevskian flourishes, Kobayashi suggests the impossibility of an individual altering the ethical standards of a social system. Kaji, driven by an idealized vision of Japan redeemed by social reform, tries to overcome injustice and exploitation during a military conquest based solely on these principles. Brutalized by the very country he defends, Kaji refuses to desert, for desertion implies relinquishing responsibility for his own homeland. Kaji's heroism lies in this exacting refusal to abandon Japan or his humanity. Part One finds Kaji working as a supervisor in a forced labor camp in southern Manchuria where he and his wife (Michiyo Aratama) attempt to better the dreadful lot of the enslaved Chinese workers. Kaji is accused of dissent, tortured, then inducted into the army. In Part Two, Kaji is equally appalled by the horrendous treatment afforded recruits. Given the rank of officer, he tries to install more humane procedures but only succeeds in attracting the ire of his fellow officers. By Part Three, the Japanese army is being routed by superior Russian troops. Fleeing to the south, Kaji is captured by the Soviet army and imprisoned. Here, he learns the bitter truth of the Red Army as liberators. Kobayashi's The Human Condition can be viewed as a single aesthetic entity, complete in its sweep of historical events and visual stylizations. The gargantuan undertaking to dramatize the wilful ironies of the Manchurian campaign never compromises Kobayashi's ability to define the human scale of injustice. Standing-in for the director, Kaji says, "Minor facts ignored by history can be fatal to the individual." It is Masaki Kobayashi's recognition of "minor facts" that joins the poetic to the journalistic in a scathing epic about the cruelties of war.