Based on Hiroshi Noma's celebrated postwar novel, Vacuum Zone has been called "the strongest anti-military film ever made in Japan...an exposé of the brutality and corruption of the Japanese army shown in its most revolting form" (Anderson and Richie, The Japanese Film). The film tells of a soldier, Kitani (Isao Kimura), who is reintegrated into the Imperial army after serving a prison term for theft. Surrounded by corrupt officers and comrades, he finds the military, with its systematic dehumanization, an even lonelier "no man's land" than prison. The film holds a key position in the antiwar genre of the immediate postwar period.