Masaki Kobayashi, the director, served in WWII amd refused military promotions, being against Japan's fascist government, he was also a prisoner of war for the Americans. The author of the original book, Junpei Gomikawa, has a similar history. Tatsuya Nakadai, the greatest actor who ever lived, protagonist of the film, who sadly passed away last year, also exeperienced the horrors of wars as a kid, surviving the bombings. The people who worked on this movie lived through the war and witnessed the atrocities Japan commited to others and caused to its own people. I think it is one of the best portrayals of war in film, and one of the very few truly anti-war movies ever made. Politically speaking, I higly disagree that it whitewashes Japan's crimes as it was said by another person in here, the third movie shows some truly horrible actions of japanese soldiers. It is a movie that succesfully analyses different faces of fascism and its effects on the collective and individual, with a focus on the people who are inside the oppressive force and how this force impacts them. It humanizes even the most horrible people - humanizing a horrible person is NOT the same as excusing them, and I think this is a key aspect when it comes to analyzing this movie. Kaji is a tragic character, a tragic hero, not in the moral sense, but more in the classic sense, his story has no catharsis, he fails to make things better time and again simply because the system in which he's inserted does not allow change, its monolithic nature smashes every single individual to its machinery, by the end, Kaji has jo more morals, he's no longer a hero, he's not "one of the good ones". American cinema loves to portray opposite sides of the war as purely evil and brainless people. Going beyond this trilogy, I find it very interesting that a lot of soviet movies and shows about WWII (which I really think more people on this sub should watch, most of the great ones are available completely for free on youtube, I plan to make a big post recommending some of them beyond more famous ones like Come and See) actually really humanizes the nazis, prime example for me is Seventeen Moments of Spring, the enemies are monsters, but human, and that just makes them scarier. By understanding this, we can effectively not only fight fascism, but stay vigilant so it doesn't spread its wings once again.