The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (I) (1959)

Seiji Miyaguchi: Kyôritsu Ô

Quotes 

• Kaji : [discussing the pardoning of prisoners due to be executed for an alleged escape attempt]  I'll be honest. There's only one chance in one hundred.

  Kyôritsu Ô : This does not concern us alone. Just as my companions stand between life and death, so do you now stand at an important crossroads.

  Kaji : You're right.

  Kyôritsu Ô : If you fail now, no one will ever trust you again, and you too will lose faith in yourself.

  Kaji : It's true.

  Kyôritsu Ô : Yet you would do nothing?

  Kaji : What can I do?

  Kyôritsu Ô : Must a man outside this barbed wire ask me such a question? Not all the Japanese working here are murderous devils. Their combined opinion objecting to this execution will be more effective than one individual alone.

  Kaji : If I'd always acted as you wanted me to there'd be no Kaji here today. I'd like to see what you'd do in my position.

  Kyôritsu Ô : You and I will both make minor mistakes. Such things can be forgiven. But an error made at a crucial moment is an unforgivable crime. Your life has been a series of errors stemming from the conflict between your work and yourself. Such errors can possibly be corrected. But this one cannot.

  Kaji : Meaning?

  Kyôritsu Ô : You'll either be revealed as a murderer wearing the mask of humanism or as one worthy of the beautiful name... "man".

• Tôfuku Kin : You plan to escape, don't you? It's impossible with all that barbed wire.

  Kyôritsu Ô : It's charged with electricity, that's all. It's men who run the electricity through it.

  Tôfuku Kin : Don't talk like that. Human beings are weak creatures. Go where you're told to go. Do what you're told to do. That's the only way to survive.

  Kyôritsu Ô : You're wrong. Man can become as strong as he wishes. He need only find the cause of his unhappiness.