***Mild spoilers below***
The Human Condition is the story of Kaji, a leader in fascist Japan with a heart of compassion. He travels all over occupied Manchuria from 1943-1945 and leads a bold but quiet fight against the heartless nature of the military machine. He is a labor organizer, a soldier, a lead private, a refugee, a POW and a homeless beggar.
It is a nine hour film and it is not for the faint of heart. It is divided into six equal measures of an hour and a half, and it was meant to be watched over a period of time, not one day. But it doesn't feel long for all that. This film is also one of the most powerful experiences of my life.
This is the most personal film I’ve ever experienced. I feel
like I’ve lost my best friend and my very self to despair and madness. To say this film is “depressing” doesn’t get
to it. I am devastated, in mourning, in
almost physical pain. And yet I would
watch this film again, right now. All
nine hours. There is so much I missed and I want to experience it all. And I don’t want to lose my relationship with
Kaji, the man who is in every scene of the film. He is my friend, my
counterpart, even in his lowest points.
He sees the world as I see it, with all the naiveté and sorrow and
struggle that accompany such a vision.
Ever since I spent months in India decades ago, observing
desperate poverty and experiencing a mild form of it myself, I see the world as
a battle between peace and collapse. Peace,
as I understand it, is wholeness. A self
wholly at peace, a community united, a nation set on providing needs, a
religion of love and compassion for all people.
That’s a big order, really.
Especially in a world that is filled with powers attempting to break
that shalom. There are billions of
hungry, wars in many nations, violence on almost every major street, the
chronically ill in every family. And
there are those who, just in the normal course of things, require more
attention: children, those nearing the end of their lives, the infirm, the very
poor, the mentally ill. To battle this
requires stamina, focus, strength and resources.
That’s how I see the world.
It’s how I’ve seen the world since I visited India in 1985 and saw real
poverty and suffering and my own complacent reaction to it. From the beginning
of 1986 I determined that I would do all I could to combat it, with whatever I
had. If that is taking my paltry life in
its fragile eggshell and throwing it against the stone wall, so be it.
The film The Human Condition comes from a similar
viewpoint. Although locked into a very
specific cultural construct—Manchuria from 1943-1945 from the viewpoint of the
Japanese invaders—it introduces the idea of the poor and the lowly again and
again. Draftees in boot camp, forced
workers, POWs, refugees, women forced to trade sex for survival, some lost in
the wilderness, the homeless, the despairing, the lost. Each of these are given their fair time and a
voice in this film. They are able to
express their anguish and the corner that they are put in. This movie is, more than anything, about the
plight of the lowly, and how they suffer not only their everyday sorrow, but
beating, raping, insults, forced hunger, unpaid labor, and more leveled on
them.
Why do the lowly suffer this way? Because some have power over them. The power forces the lowly into their place of
suffering and the lowly must, in their way, support the system that causes
their suffering. These powerful are not only the thumbs of the system, but they
also heap on additional abuse onto the lowly that isn’t required or even legal
by the system they represent. Why should
they do this? It isn’t just their power, but their
assumption of superiority that makes them so deadly. They “deserve” the better treatment as
opposed to the lowly, and the lowly “deserve” the additional abuse heaped on
them. Their petty complaints are really
more important than the survival of the lowly. It’s as if some people think
that being homeless isn’t enough, they also must be criminalized and harmed to
teach them that being homeless is a bad idea.
Who would do that? Oh yeah… we
do.
Kaji is our protagonist, he is the mediator between the
outcast and the powerful. He has
charismatic power that gives him authority even when the system hasn’t given
him that authority. He is like Joseph in
the Hebrew Bible—no matter how low he lands, he still rises to the top of the
heap. He is smart and courageous and
strong and determined. He is also
compassionate for the plight of the lowly, but that compassion isn’t all. It is that he stands up for better treatment
for the lowly, so that they may thrive, or at least survive. He is the persistent voice of justice for the
outcast. He is sometimes listened to,
always reluctantly. More often than not,
he is mocked and derided.
Kaji attacked by both sides.
By the powerful because he is seen as subversive, by the lowly because
he is seen as an oppressor. What is
funny is that he is not subversive at all.
He gathers what resources he must to allow the lowly to survive and
thrive. Nor is he oppressive. He is in the place of power so that he might
cushion the attack against the lowly, but the lowly only feel the attack, they don't see the softening of it.
I understand Kaji, better than many, if I may be so
bold. I just read some critics wondering
if Kaji is a realistic character, standing with compassion when the rule of the
day was prejudice. I have been given the
opportunity to be a pastor of the homeless and the mentally ill in a United
States that thinks the poor are lazy and unworthy of compassion. The treatment of the homeless and the
mentally ill by the police here in Portland and its suburbs is comparable to the
treatment of the POWs after WWII or the Chinese by fascist Japan. Their possessions are stolen from them or
destroyed by local government forces.
Even as some of us attempt to assist these very poor, we are hindered by
others. The local housed people consider
themselves superior to the homeless and consider the homeless worthy of being
punished just because they are homeless.
The neighbors of our church and the local government wants to stop us
from providing showers or overnight shelter on the coldest nights because they
have fears or policies. Me and my kind
have stood up, attempting to help the community see the homeless as human
beings, worthy of respect as anyone else, local citizens and not criminals
unless they have actually done criminal activity. And for this work, we have been insulted by
the neighbors, threatened, yelled at by the police, knives drawn on us, and kicked
out of our homes.
Because of this background, I truly appreciate Kaji. I haven’t been through all he has, but I
understand his perspective and I can appreciate his suffering, even if I haven’t
been through it all. Kaji represents my heart, and when he speaks I can see
myself speaking the words, even if I am at times uncomfortable with them. At this point, I am older than Kaji ever got,
and sometimes I think of him as a younger version of myself and I’d love to
give him some counsel.
When Kaji is naïve, in the first film, I understand, for I
was once naïve and considered that I could change the world myself. I want to sit down with Kaji and explain to
him that his difficulties came from thinking that the uncompassionate,
oppressive world would just see the justice of his position and agree to
it. He is so humble that he fails to see
the assuredness of the oppressors superiority.
The lowly aren’t just lowly because of some twist of fate but because
they “deserve” their position in some karmic insanity. And their suffering is “good” for them in some
twisted logic. Kaji can’t understand
this logic so he keeps speaking the language of compassion, of empathy with the
lowly, which the powerful cannot understand.
So Kaji is alone and persecuted.
Kaji is also like Jesus.
Not in some false Christ-type many movies attempt to throw in. In many scenes, however, he is willing to
suffer and take on the beatings and tortures that would have gone to the
lowly. He
accepted it so they wouldn’t
have to. Perhaps that was his own
hubris, that he could handle the suffering better than they. But in a way this was true. Because he was taking on suffering out of
nobility, not out of some false sense of justice. No one who punished him considered him worthy
of punishment. Rather they punished him
because they had to release their own wickedness in some way. Kaji accepted it so others would not.
Eventually that suffering broke him down. He is only human. In the second film, Kaji becomes angry,
sometimes irrationally so, lashing out at his persecutors and I wanted to have another session with him. I understand why he is angry. He is angry because his body cannot endure
such suffering anymore. He is angry
because he cannot endure the irrational punishment any more. But I’d like to remind him of the result of
his anger. His anger wouldn’t create compassion for the lowly, nor would it
force the oppressor’s hand. In fact, he
is undermining his own compassion, for he fails to see that the oppressors are
enslaved by their own actions and that they need deliverance as much as the
lowly do. Perhaps he can’t help it, but
if he can, he should control it, for other’s sake.
In the third film, Kaji cannot forgive himself for his own
acts of oppression. Again, I understand,
as I too have oppressed and beat myself with guilt. What I wanted to comfort him with was that
the system of power makes it all too easy to oppress those who are weak. We can oppress with a word, with a glance, or
by simply ignoring the lowly. We must
resist those impulses, but we will slip into them. When we do, we cannot beat ourselves up
because of our failings in a system of destruction, but resolve never to do it
again. We must remain strong so as to
both help the needy and fight the system of injustice. And it is easy to fall into the trap of
weakening ourselves with shame or a too-quick-surrender.
Finally, Kaji snaps and takes his vengeance out on one who caused the death of the lowly. Again, I wish I could have spoken to him, even yelled at him. Take your vengeance out by changing the world! See your ideal flourish! Look at the long view-- he isn't the problem, and you can't take vengeance out on a system. You are just participating in the system by being the criminal against it. You are fitting into their idea of you! I don't know that he would listen to me, though.
What kept Kaji going, waking up each day, was the thought of
going home to his wife. My home is even
more distant than his: I see a world of justice, a world where the poor aren’t
oppressed, a world where governments and religions are organized around
compassion instead of a false sense of justice. My home is where the poorest of the poor have
a home and a comfort and can contribute creatively to society.
Now I’m going to get all religious on you, that the film
never went. In this view of the world,
Kaji had to go mad. His hope was pointless. In fact, in the third film there are hints
that his wife was probably raped, beaten, starved or sold her virtue for food, possibly
dead. The home that Kaji longed for
probably wasn’t there.
In Christianity, we are told that we will get to the end of
our lives and not find this home we seek, a world of justice and hope for the
lowly. The next world is where we will
find it, and those who gave mercy and suffered for would get a second chance at
life, successfully creating a just world that could not be done in this life.
And I’ll be honest. I
am often stumbling in the snow, wondering if my hope is in vain. The way I figure it, Kaji, is that even if
there is no home to come to, I have done what little I can to make the world a
place where others can have home.
Perhaps this world wasn’t meant for us, Kaji. Perhaps we were never meant to find
home. But isn’t it enough to know that
we offered comfort to others? Isn’t it
enough that our lives were lived for the ease and survival of others? We may not have done much. Helped a few hundred people. But isn’t that enough to keep living
for? Even if that means we go to
Siberia, isn’t that enough? Certainly better than dying of frostbite, longing
for a home we’ll never have.
Isn’t it?
