Tag: Naoko Kubo

Four Hours of Terror (高度7000米　恐怖の四時間, Tsuneo Kobayashi, 1959)

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It seems quite strange now to think of a time when air travel was both new and exciting and as easy as catching a bus. It’s this juxtaposition that Tsuneo Kobayashi’s hijacking thriller Four Hours of Terror (高度7000米　恐怖の四時間, Kodo Nanasen Metoru: Kyofu no Yojikan) plays with as an armed fugitive takes a passenger plane hostage in an attempt to escape after committing a murder while those on board struggle to accommodate themselves to this new form of transportation. 

This sense of exoticisation is obvious from the opening voiceover which sings the praises of Haneda airport as the gateway to a newly internationalised Japan though in actuality the flight in question is a domestic service travelling from Tokyo to Sapporo. The voiceover also introduces us to each of the passengers which come from differing strata of society and even includes a middle-aged American couple. There are in fact three generations of couples on board who seem to represent different stages of life from the newly wed students so wrapped up marital bliss that they barely notice anything else, to a long-married reporter and his wife on their first holiday together since their honeymoon, and an elderly couple returning from a trip to the capital who are mystified by this new age of mass media and air travel. The newlyweds apparently won this free trip on an aeroplane after agreeing to have their wedding broadcast on television in an early example of reality TV, reinforcing the sense of irony that they weren’t necessarily supposed to be on this doomed flight after all. 

Neither was car saleswoman Kazuko (Hitomi Nakahara) who has apparently been pulled away to Sapporo by a short notice business opportunity. She gets a standby ticket, as does her boyfriend/rival Fujio (Tatsuo Umemiya) who is also on track to the same opportunity. Weirdly, Kazuko is not overly sympathetic having randomly kicked a basket containing a little dog about to be smuggled on the plane by its doting owner, but does perhaps represent something of a more independent post-war womanhood even as she effortlessly deflects unwanted attentions from a client she may also have been exploiting in order to obtain his business. Having boarded the plane, she ends up sitting next to another man who requested a standby ticket and was using a surname that was the same as hers but evidently turns out to have been assumed. So lax is the security, you don’t necessarily have to travel under your legal name. In any case, she briefly flirts with him as an overture to a business relationship and also to annoy Fujio before overhearing a news report about the escaped fugitive on her portable radio.

Kida (Fumitake Omura), the fugitive, is dressed like a stereotypical yakuza which makes it odd that no one treats him with suspicion until they spot he’s carrying a gun which he had no trouble at all bringing on board. Though hijackings are not exactly unheard of, they aren’t particularly common either so no one would really suppose anyone had any reason to take a domestic flight to the provinces hostage, and really that was never Kida’s intention merely a last resort after being discovered. Later he gives a partial justification for his life of crime in that his mother beat him and then threw him off a cliff which is why he has a false leg. In any case, there’s a small moment of potential redemption towards the end when the kindly old lady tells him he can’t undo what he’s done, but could still resolve to change assuming they all survive this difficult situation with the plane which now has mechanical problems thanks to the gun going off. 

Even so, it’s the passengers who tie Kida up after the pilot ,Yamamoto (Ken Takakura), manages to disarm him by weaponising the plane. By flying to a high altitude, they knock him out with the air pressure, but are then faced with the mechanical failure of the landing gear which seems to be linked to with Yamamoto’s wartime trauma. A secondary drama revolves around his stoical character with one of the stewardesses apparently in love with him while simultaneously wary of his iciness given that he apparently showed no emotion after receiving the news his wife had passed away but simply flew the plane home as normal. Some see this as his devotion to the aircraft which is in a way a commitment to his duty over his human feelings, the factor that perhaps allows him to save the plane and get the passengers home safely. He is however saved by his love for his late wife with the cigarette case that contains her photo saving him from the worst effects of a bullet. 

The same may go for the co-pilot Hara (Kenji Imai) who is dragging his feet over his marriage to Yamamoto’s sister because he wants to achieve 3000 flight hours before getting married so he can call himself a real pilot. Though the film plants the seeds of these random plot threads and the social commentary that goes with them, it does not particularly engage while the hijacking itself remains fairly low key given that Kida is not a particularly “bad” bad guy. He just wants to go to a random place where the police won’t be waiting for him, but otherwise refrains from harassing the passengers save threatening a little boy travelling on his own to return to his parents after visiting his grandfather in Tokyo. In essence, there’s a kind of innocence and naivety in play which speaks to something of post-war hopefulness and a wonder in the frantic pace of progress in which the day is saved by keeping calm and carrying on even in the face of severe adversity.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Tengu Priest (お坊主天狗, Yasushi Sasaki, 1962)

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Disparate denizens of Edo are united in one thing in Yasushi Sasaki’s light hearted jidaigeki, Tengu Priest (お坊主天狗, Obozu tengu), revenge. Like many jidaigeki, what they really want is revenge against the evils of feudalism to which they have each fallen victim, but also acknowledge that they have found something better in being outside it in the solidarity that exists between them as outsiders free from the obligations of samurai society if also with loose ends waiting to be tied.

Once a hatamoto with a 1000 Koku stipend, Obo Kichiza (Chiezo Kataoka) is now a much feared figure keeping order in Edo. When some yakuza toughs are hassling the geisha Kozome (Hibari Misora) at the theatre, insisting that she serve them sake even as she reminds them she’s off the clock, one look from him stops them dead though Kichizo is also impressed with Kozome’s nerve. Like him, Kozome is also in Edo for revenge. Formerly a samurai’s daughter, she became a geisha to look for the man who killed her father in a stupid quarrel over a fencing duel. Kichiza, meanwhile, seeks revenge against the local lord, Honda Etsu (Masao Mishima), who killed his father in a fit of temper when he ordered him to commit seppuku for causing his son-in-law to fall off his horse but he refused. 

Loyal retainer Kinpei (Ryutaro Otomo) had begged for his forgiveness and insisted that he could get Etsu to reform but three years have passed and not only has he bribed his way to head office but his behaviour has declined still further. We see him cruelly cut down a maid seemingly for no reason, simply ordering his men to get rid of the body. Etsu has a reputation for random violence while drunk, but as he is the lord, there are no real consequences for him. His retainers cover up his crimes, and Kinpei’s sole attempt to talk some sense into him goes nowhere, meanwhile his chief adviser Shichinosuke (Sentaro Fushimi) is basically running the show telling others the lord is not in his right mind and cannot make decisions so he must make them for him.

They are all, including Etsu himself, victims of the feudal order in which the systems of power are necessarily corrupt. In his yakuza persona, Kichiza has struck up a friendship with another geisha, Kozuru (Naoko Kubo), who was actually a lady in waiting working as a maid at his estate. She has long been in love with him, but the class difference would have made any union impossible. Ironically, she remarks to Kozome that even in their present state they are still a Hatamoto and a lady in waiting so she dare not express her love for him. Only once his revenge is concluded and he’s fully abandoned his samurai status can Kichiza truly be free to embrace a relationship with Kozuru while conversely Kozome regains her life as a samurai’s daughter by avenging the death of her father.

Kozome asks for Kichiza’s help to track down the target of her revenge, but he also respects her wishes and understands that it’s something she must do herself as does eccentric sword sharpener Shinzaburo (Hashizo Okawa ) who actively stands back so she, another wronged woman, can stick the knife in. Hibari Misora’s role in the film is smaller than one might expect as her revenge subplot is secondary to Kichiza’s and she has relatively little screen time with only a brief musical sequence during a naginata dance though she does participate in the high octane final showdown in which all grievances are exorcised and a kind of order returned to the samurai realm even if it must be destroyed to so as Kinpei resolves to protect both the lives and livelihoods of their many retainers and the integrity of Kichiza, going so far as to congratulate Kozome on the successful completion of her revenge. 

Yet what made the whole thing possible was Kichiza’s own band of outlaw drifters whom he allowed to live in his home he later says just so that they would have a place to come and be together so that they might more easily reintegrate into mainstream society. He might have lost his domain and samurai status but has discovered something better in this accidental community. They may be in a sense almost like retainers to him, but if so they stay by choice rather than obligation and help out of a genuine sense of loyalty and affection. In essence, in taking his revenge, he frees himself from the oppressive nature of the samurai code and is able to live like an ordinary man lamenting that if only he and Kinpei had both been ronin they could have enjoyed their time together for longer. Lighthearted and cheerful despite its dark themes, the film is nevertheless a condemnation of the hypocrisies and abuses of a feudal society in which freedom is to be found only among those who live outside it.

Ghost in the Regiment (憲兵と幽霊, Nobuo Nakagawa, 1958)

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A treacherous military police officer comes to embody the evils of war in Nobuo Nakagawa’s eerie psychological horror, Ghost in the Regiment (憲兵と幽霊, Kenpei to Yurei). Kyotaro Namiki’s The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty (憲兵とバラバラ死美人, Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin) had been a big hit the previous year so studio head Mitsugi Okura tasked Nakagawa with producing something similar at which point he proposed a film centring on “treachery and patriotism”. The Japanese title closely resembles that of Namiki’s film in beginning “the military policeman and…” as if it were a continuation of an ongoing series but is otherwise unrelated and could even be interpreted to suggest that the protagonist is both malevolent supernatural entity and military policeman. 

Lieutenant Namishima (Shigeru Amachi) is indeed later described as “the embodiment of evil” and his desire for conquest, in this case of a woman about to marry another man whom he will eventually win and discard, is reflective of the destructive lust for imperialist expansion. When Akiko (Naoko Kubo) marries another member of the military police, Tazawa (Shoji Nakayama), in the autumn of 1941, Sergeant Takashi (Fujio Murakami) jokes with Namishima that he has “failed to win the girl”, but Namishima merely smirks and explains that he’s playing a long game, “The true spirit of a warrior is found in the final victory.” Soon after he frames Tazawa for having stolen secret documents he himself has sold to Chinese spy Zhang (Arata Shibata), subjecting him to heinous torture and having both Akiko and his mother (Fumiko Miyata) tortured in front of him to force Tazawa to confess. Thereafter he has him executed by firing squad but Tazawa, strung up on a cross, continues to protest his innocence until the final moment issuing a curse on all those that have wronged him. 

Unlike some of Nakagawa’s other films, the ghosts here are less supernatural than they are psychological. Namishima has frequent flashbacks and visions that remind him of his crimes and is quite literally haunted by his guilt while refusing to admit that he feels any. It seems that he harbours strong resentment towards the military and implicitly towards the militarist regime and emperor having been rejected by the military academy because his father had committed suicide. His treachery is revenge but also equal parts self-destruction and a wilful bid to assert himself through his transgressions marvelling at his success in becoming the sort of person who could betray his own country and kill his own people. Both Tazawa and his brother (also played by Shoji Nakayama), who later joins the military police hoping to investigate the circumstances of his death, were graduates of the military academy and therefore idealised cogs in the military machine. 

Somewhat uncomfortably, the righteousness of Tazawa’s brother effectively legitimises the militarists in suggesting that a man like Namishima is an aberrance unreflective of the militarist ideal. “Ignoring the innocent goes against all the military police stand for”, Tazawa earnestly tells Namishima when he attempts to cut corners framing another suspect for his own ends, lending the military police an air of legitimacy they may not have had in reality when we might ask ourselves what exactly it was that they “stood for” which is more likely the nihilistic amorality to which the narcissistic Namishima subscribes. As he said, women lose their lustre once he’s got them. Having pretended to be a friend to Akiko in her widowhood, he rapes her during an air raid and it’s at this point that Japan begins rapidly losing the war as Namishima’s moral decline mirrors the fortunes of his nation. Having got what he wanted, he callously discards her and is transferred to Manchuria where he continues to work with Zhang and his wife, Ruri/Honglei (Yoko Mihara), with whom he has something like a more genuine romance.

His crimes will, however, catch up with him and it’s in Manchuria that his schemes begin to unravel not least because of the unsettlement that the presence of Tazawa’s brother, who has been seconded to his unit, causes him. The film’s surreal conclusion takes place in a Christian graveyard with Namishima surrounded by crosses which align with the crucifix on which Tazawa was executed. The crucifix itself would have no particular religious connotation in Japan and is simply a convenient way of constraining someone for execution but here takes on a symbolic dimension in confronting Namishima with his sins of transgression. Soon he is surrounded by hundreds of Tazawas on crosses, echoing the many men who were in effect murdered by the imperialist regime in a war fuelled by the same lust for conquest that motivated Namishima. Nakagawa’s camera takes on the role of an observer, sometimes comically swooping between talking heads as if following an ongoing conversation while later rocking in unsteadiness as Namishima begins to lose his grip on reality, finally confronted with the “ghosts” that surround him. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Sand City in Manchuria (砂漠を渡る太陽, Kiyoshi Saeki, 1960)

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A pure hearted doctor stands strong against the forces of imperialism if somewhat ambivalently in Kiyoshi Saeki’s wartime drama The Sand City in Manchuria (砂漠を渡る太陽, Sabaku wo Wataru Taiyo). “Why isn’t there just one country? I don’t want a country” a young Chinese woman exclaims towards the film’s conclusion in what is intended as an anti-war statement but also invites the inference that the one country should be Japan and that China is wrong to resist the kind of “co-existence” that the idealistic hero is fond of preaching. 

Dr. Soda (Koji Tsuruta), known as Soh, has been in Manchuria for two years running a poor clinic in a trading outpost on a smuggling route through the desert. He came, he later tells another Japanese transplant, after being talked into it by a pastor who told him about US missionaries who endured hardship in the Gobi desert and lamented that no Japanese people had been willing to take on such “thankless” work in the midst of the imperial expansion. There is a kind of awkwardness in Soda’s positioning as the good Japanese doctor which perhaps reflects the view from 1960 in that he objects to the way the Japanese military operates in Manchuria and most particularly to Japanese exceptionalism which causes them to look down on the local Chinese community as lesser beings, but within that all he preaches is equality and co-existence which suggests that he sees nothing particularly wrong in Japan being in Manchuria in the first place while implying that the Chinese are expected to simply co-exist with an occupying force to which they have in any case been given no choice but to consent. 

Nevertheless, it’s clear that the Japanese are in this case the bad guys. Soda is at one point accosted by a drunken soldier who takes against his choice to adopt Chinese dress while rudely refusing to pay his rickshaw driver. The animosity of some in the town is well justified as we hear that their mother was murdered by a Japanese soldier, or that they were raped by Japanese troops and now have nothing but hate for them to they extent that they would withhold vital medical treatment from a child rather than consider allowing Soda to treat them. Soda’s main paying job is working at an opium clinic hinting at the various ways imperialist powers have used the opium trade to bolster their control over the local population, while it later becomes clear that one of the Chinese doctors has been in cahoots with a corrupt Japanese intelligence officer to, ironically, syphon off opium meant for medical uses and sell it to addicts in a truly diabolical business plan. 

Though Soda is well respected in the town because he offers free medical treatment to those who could never otherwise afford it, he is sometimes naive about their real living conditions. Outraged that a young woman has been sold into sexual slavery, he marches off to the red light district to buy her back but is confused on his return realising her family aren’t all that happy about it because they cannot afford to feed her and were depending on the money she would send them because the father has become addicted to opium and can no longer work. The girl, Hoa (Yoshiko Sakuma), becomes somewhat attached to Soda but he is largely uninterested in her because she is only 17, while her affection for him causes tension with the daughter of an exiled Russian professor which is only repaired once they all start working together for the common good after the town after it comes under threat from infectious disease. 

In an echo of our present times, it seems not much has changed in the last 80 years or so, the townspeople quickly turn on Soda once it become clear that he’s putting the town on lockdown to prevent the spread of infectious meningitis after a Russian soldier stumbles in and dies of it. The disease firstly exposes the essential racism even among those Japanese people who have lived in Manchuria longterm such as the mysterious Ishida (So Yamamura) who remarks that diseases like that only affect the Manchurians and they’ll be fine because they are “more hygienic”, while simultaneously painting the infection as a symptom of foreign corruption delivered by the Russian incursion. Soda visits a larger hospital to get the samples confirmed but is told that the disease has not been seen in Manchuria before and so they have no vaccine stocks leaving him dependent on the smuggling network to get the supplies he needs. As the town is a trading outpost whose entire economy is dependent on the business of travellers just passing through, the townspeople are obviously opposed to the idea of keeping them out fearing that they will soon starve going so far as to tear down Soda’s quarantine signs while throwing stones at his house. 

In another irony, it’s Ishida’s pistol that wields ultimate control immediately silencing the mayor’s objections in a rude reminder of the local hierarchy. Many of the townspeople including inn owner Huang (Yunosuke Ito) and Hoa’s sister Shari (Naoko Kubo) are involved with the resistance to which Soda seems to remain quite oblivious and in any case adopts something of a neutral position but gains a grudging respect from Huang thanks to his humanitarianism that eventually saves him from brutal bandit Riyan (a rare villain role for a young Ken Takakura). In any case, as the corrupt Japanese officials pull out to escape the imminent Russian incursion, Soda decides to stay in part to atone for the sins of the Japanese in an acceptance of his responsibility as a Japanese person if one who has not (directly) participated in the imperialist project even if he was in a sense still underpinning it. Essentially a repurposed ninkyo eiga starring Koji Tsuruta as a morally upright man surrounded by corruption but trying to do the right thing to protect those who cannot protect themselves, there is an undeniable awkwardness in the film’s imperialist ambivalence but also a well intentioned desire to look back at the wartime past with clearer eyes and a humanitarian spirit. 

The Thief in Black (黒の盗賊, Umetsugu Inoue, 1964)

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Best known as a master of the musical, Umetsugu Inoue had a long and varied filmography embracing almost every genre imaginable. He began his career at Shintoho and later joined Nikkatsu where he quickly became an in demand director often working with top star Yujiro Ishihara, but took the somewhat unusual step of going freelance in 1960 thereafter working at various studios including Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong. 1964’s The Thief in Black (黒の盗賊, Kuro no Tozoku) is not a musical but is characteristically playful even within the confines of the lighter side of Toei’s jidaigeki adventures. 

Set between the Battle of Sekigahara and the Siege of Osaka, the samurai corruption in play is essentially the burgeoning Tokugawa dictatorship, the heroes eventually uncovering Ieyasu’s secret plan for making sure his line (well, more himself in essence) remains in power for perpetuity through an insidious plot to weaken the feudal lords and ensure their loyalty to him. Meanwhile, the still developing city of Edo is beginning to turn against the Tokugawa who seem to be intent on exploiting ordinary people to enrich themselves most obviously through forcing the local workforce to renovate Edo castle rather than cleaning up the town which is apparently rampant with crime. Faced with such lack of leadership, the townspeople have come to admire a Robin Hood-like vigilante known only as the Thief in Black who alone is resisting overreaching lords. 

Part of the problem is that Ieyasu’s rule is still insecure because of the potential threat of Hideyori Toyotomi in Osaka. Consequently, they are fearful that some of the men working on the castle may be Toyotomi spies or otherwise disclose information that might benefit him if he chose to attack which is why they’ve refused the workers permission to return home to their families during the pause before beginning the second phase of works leading to further unrest. Meanwhile, corrupt local lord Tadakatsu (Ryutaro Otomo) and his sleazy priest buddy Tenkai (Minoru Chiaki) have an even darker plan in mind, preparing to simply kill the five master craftsmen in charge to ensure they present no threat. Alerted to the situation on the ground by idealistic samurai Jiro (Hashizo Okawa), their boss instructs Tadakatsu in no uncertain terms that he must treat the workers fairly in order to prevent civil unrest and/or disillusionment with the Tokugawa regime but the pair are entirely unfazed and determined to go on with their nefarious plan getting rid of Jiro if the occasion arises. 

As we later discover and in a typical jidaigeki plot device, Jiro is one of a pair of twins with his brother Kotaro (also Hashizo Okawa) abandoned because of the superstitious belief that multiple births are inauspicious. Though both men unwittingly lay claim to the name, Kotaro turns out to be the masked vigilante, his primary cause to regain the lands of the family who raised him unfairly displaced from their estates on the Musashino plains because of Tokugawa greed. Though Jiro, raised as a member of the establishment, is originally loyal to the Tokugawa who have after all brought about an era of peace, he soon begins to see that their rule is no good for the people of Edo. In his more egalitarian worldview, only by enriching the poor can they secure their rule which means less castle building and more infrastructural development along with paying people fairly for their work and absolutely not killing them afterwards. Kotaro too claims that his rebellion is for the good of the common people though unlike Jiro is much more transgressive in his ideology prepared to shake off his samurai status to become a wandering outlaw rather than content himself with the restrictive life of the heir to a samurai clan. 

Such messages are perhaps common in Toei’s brand of jidaigeki but seem unusually pronounced as the peasant workers are often given voice to lament their fate and resist their oppression more directly, pointing the finger not just at a rogue rotten lord but at the entire system built on exploiting their labour. Nevertheless, Inoue injects a hearty dose of whimsical humour to the politically charged narrative even going so far as to include a bumbling ninja claiming to be the famous Hattori Hanzo along with a comic relief magistrate and former samurai brothel owner taking his own kind of ironic revenge in getting the cowardly lords hooked on modernity with a load of faulty rifles. Obviously, Ieyasu couldn’t be stopped, but perhaps they slowed him down and reminded him of the dangers of underestimating the people. Shot with Inoue’s characteristic flare if remaining largely within the Toei house style, Thief in Black is a surprisingly direct attack on corrupt and entitled government but also a righteous romp as its idealistic heroes shuffle themselves back into their ideal positions while fighting Tokugawa oppression all the way. 

Devotion to Railway (大いなる驀進, Hideo Sekigawa, 1960)

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In the early 1960s, Japan’s rail network might have felt a little uneasy with the Shinkansen already on the horizon. Hideo Sekigawa’s Devotion to Railway (大いなる驀進, Oinaru Bakushin) is in part a celebration of this essential service, the conductor and steward ever fond of reminding us that most passengers probably don’t realise that the Sakura sleeper service on which they are travelling from Tokyo all the way to Nagasaki is operated by only seven or eight people (though they don’t seem to be counting the staff from the dining car which hints at a minor source of division among the crew). While the Japanese title which means something more like “the great dash” might hint at a little more excitement, the film is less thriller than gentle ensemble drama in which the passengers and crew must come together to solve the improbable number of crises arising on this otherwise ordinary journey. 

Even so considering the film is directed by the left-leaning Sekigawa best known for his anti-war films such as Hiroshima and Listen to the Voices of the Sea, not to mention scripted by Kaneto Shindo, it is a little ironic that the central thrust of the drama revolves around junior steward Yajima’s (Katsuo Nakamura) rediscovery of his own devotion to the railway after at the beginning of the film declaring this will be his final journey. Mimicking the dilemma at the centre of Yoshitaro Nomura’s Stakeout, Yajima’s problem is that he has been engaged for two years and is sick of waiting to get married but his girlfriend Kimie (Yoshiko Sakuma) is the main breadwinner in her family and though his salary could support them as a couple it won’t stretch much further. Kimie, however, is dead against him taking the counter-productive decision to quit the railways even with the suggestion of going into business with a friend who owns a cafe, partly because it’s better to stick with a steady job than take a chance on something less certain, and partly because she knows he likes his work and all his experience will be wasted if he suddenly opts to switch careers. 

Despite its positive warmhearted message of people pulling together to overcome crisis, the film does skew a little conservative in essentially turning Kimie into a minor villain as if she were in a sense responsible for making Yajima doubt his devotion to the railway. After jumping aboard to make sure he doesn’t suddenly quit before the end of the line, she eventually has a heart to heart with the sympathetic conductor Matsuzaki (Rentaro Mikuni) that forces to her to admit that perhaps she’s just nervous about the nature of married life and has been making trouble where there needn’t be any, now certain that it’s better to just get married as soon as possible and let the rest figure itself out. 

Meanwhile, there’s additional tension seeing as a waitress from the diner car has an obvious crush on Yajima and is quite resentful on being presented with his fiancée, but even this is eventually solved with the two women becoming accidental friends during the climatic crisis, a landslide caused by a typhoon, that grants each of the passengers an epiphany about what it is they really want out of life. While waiting for the maintenance crew from the next station to arrive, Yajima, still in a bad mood, stands around doing not much of anything until coaxed into action by Kimie and Matsuzaki, Kimie too eventually jumping off the train to solve this literal roadblock in their relationship followed by the dining car girls and a young woman only on the train to transport blood to a hospital needed urgently by 2pm the next day. This sense of collective endeavour opening the way gives everyone on board a new sense of positivity, allowing Kimie and Yajima to repair their relationship and a man who tried to take his own life in the night to gain a new sense of hope for future. 

Several times Yajima is reminded that he has the lives of the passengers in his hands which is undoubtedly true given that there is always the chance of disaster yet also perhaps going a little far seeing as most of his job is checking tickets and providing travel information. Nevertheless, there is a lot going on on this train from eloping couples to yakuza assassins, not to mention the twin sights of a newly wed couple and a pompous politician momentarily disembarking at each stop to be feted either by workers at their factory or the local members of their political party. The snooty politician even gets a minor comeuppance from a famous pickpocket who steals his watch as a joke and then gives it back only to dismissively ignore his thank you message while eating a giant apple. 

Surprisingly handsome for a Toei programmer, Sekigawa’s deft direction lends a claustrophobic sense of dread to the interior of the train stalked by a vengeful assassin, while simultaneously making it an essentially safe space guarded by the ever solicitous crew keen to help an anxious young woman with a long journey ahead of her arrive on time to get home to her chronically ill mother. An effective piece of advertising for the Sakura sleeper service (which ran until 2005 albeit in slightly different forms), Devotion to Railway may surprise in its insistence that the hero rededicate himself to his employer but is nevertheless a charming ensemble drama which finds a new sense of positivity in the solidarity between friends and strangers coming together to overcome crisis through common endeavour. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOfaXFcXKsQ