The Human Condition I: No Greater Love

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love follows Kaji, a Japanese engineer with pacifist and humanist convictions who takes a post supervising labour at an iron-mining operation in Manchuria during the Second World War. The job exempts him from military service, so he moves there with his new wife, Michiko. Once on site, he tries to improve conditions for the Chinese workers and prisoners used as forced labour. His superiors, foremen and the military police resist his efforts, and his principles put him on a collision course with the authorities around him.

The film is the first instalment of Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy adapting Junpei Gomikawa's novel. Kobayashi directed it in 1959, between I Will Buy You and the trilogy's second part, The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity, and wrote the screenplay with Zenzō Matsuyama; Shigeru Wakatsuki produced. Tatsuya Nakadai plays Kaji and Michiyo Aratama plays Michiko, with Chikage Awashima, Ineko Arima, Sō Yamamura and Akira Ishihama among a credited cast of forty-one.

Running 204 minutes, the film is rated 8.6 out of 10 by critics and 8.5 on IMDb, with roughly 11,000 votes, and 8.1 on TMDB from about 300 votes. The large gap in vote counts shows a strong audience response concentrated on IMDb, while the close agreement between critics and audiences indicates both groups judge it about equally highly.