Masaki Kobayashi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, best known for the epic trilogy The Human Condition (1959–1961), the samurai films Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967), and the horror anthology Kwaidan (1964). Senses of Cinema described him as "one of the finest depicters of Japanese society in the 1950s and 1960s."

The Human Condition is a trilogy of Japanese epic war drama films co-written and directed by Masaki Kobayashi, based on the novel of the same name by Junpei Gomikawa. The films are subtitled No Greater Love (1959), Road to Eternity (1959), and A Soldier's Prayer (1961).