hi Markus,
being a bit of manchuria buff [trains] I kept these, so here's a cut and
paste,
etc,
---------------------
Here are some quick IMDb links for the ones I can think of off of the
top of my head:
I Just Didn't Do It: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794350/
Hana and Alice: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407851/
Railroad Man: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206216/
Cafe Lumiere: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412596/
The Taste of Tea: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413893/
Nobody Knows: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408664/
Long shots:
A Gentle Breeze in the Village: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0997184/
(this is more of a train tracks movie than a train movie. They do take
the train to Tokyo at one point, though.)
April Story: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146271/ (The story begins in a
train station in Hokkaido)
Suicide Club: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312843/ (Some... scenes take
place on subway platforms)
All About Lily Chou-Chou: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297721/ (Some
important scenes take place on the subway, and in the train station)
Trains and train stations in Japanese films? I can't believe the
question is straightforward. Is Brian trying to seduce us into
watching Otomo's /Steamboy/ (sigh!) or perhaps inaugurate the
longest-running thread in KineJapan's dear history? (Asking us about
which Japanese films figure Japanese characters would have been just too
obvious ... okay, I'm exaggerating here.) But then again, it's such a
fun question for another one like me who grew up with a freight train
running right down the main street of my small American hometown twice a
day. (It was fun to watch during the daytime--and at night, as a little
boy, I'd listen wistfully, awfully--as in awe-filled--from my bed to the
rumble that shook our little city. )
Well, here are some of my favorites:
Wartime Train: /Sanshiro Sugata/'s final scene--Sugata's subordination
to moral order is matched by his containment within a train---and
doesn't he even remove a piece of soot from his beloved's eye ... (now
this was one year before David Lean's /Brief Encounter---/or am I
confusing it with another film?)
Postwar Golden Trains: Nakahira's great shots of the train station and
platform and kiosks in /Crazed Fruit /and Kurosawa's /High and Low/
(that incredible action scene) and /Dodeskaden /(the phantasy trains
that we never see, almost the inverse of Kinugasa's trains that we
/do/) are beaten by the beautiful sentimentality of Noriko, Tomi's
watch, and Kyoko's view of the train as it leaves Onomichi in /Tokyo
Story/.
New Wave Trains: /Violence at Noon /gives us all kinds of trains: from
the shinkansen--even fear of a murderer on a train--to the wild pans on
a more local train as Shino and Matsuko (Koyama Akiko) head to a failed
double-suicide--
Or how about the tunnel with no train ... in Kawase's /Moe no Suzaku ...
/train as transport to a differently gendered world in /Summer Vacation
1999/
/
/
But now I've fallen for the question ... I must wrest my mind back. I
look forward to other's responses.
Jonathan M Hall
UC Irvine
Also, 2 major parts of Swing Girls take place on the train:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435434/
What a nice thread! I would add that time-travel is also a form of
transportation, and there is a real boom in time travel (and the way it
is visualized) in the 80s. In addition to Pink Films, there were quite a
few sexually themed train films in V-Cinema in the 1990s; the best known
and most successfull is probably the "O-shiri wo nademawashi-tzuzuketa
otoko" series. Directed by Tomioka Tadafumi, an early collaborator of
Hiroki Ryuichi, this series certainly took a lot of inspiration from the
Pink chikan densha films. Mirroring the boom time of V-Cinema, it had
considerably higher budgets than the Pink versions, was shot on film (at
least in the first few episodes), and was both less explicit and more
character-oriented. Also, in case these haven't been mentioned yet:
There are shinkansen scenes in Oshima's Violence at Noon, and Masumura's
version of Ashi ni Sawatta Onna features some key scenes on the train,
if I remember correctly. Also the beginning of Obayashi Nobuhiko's House
has a quite experimental version of a train ride. Kadokawa Haruki's
Aijou Monogatari has the heroine (played by Harada Tomoyo) dancing
faux-flashdance style on the train. Alex
--
*One of the alltime greatest train sequences in the history of movies is
the ransom-money drop from the Shinkansen in Kurosawa's /Tengoku to
Jigoku /("High & Low" ).*
For a station scene, I love the tense scene near the end of Kurosawa's
/Nora Inu /("Stray Dog"), in which detective Mifune Toshiro suspiciously
eyes all the people in the waiting room of a little suburban station,
desperately trying to identify which one is the killer.
There are so many trains in Japanese movies one doesn't know where to
begin. Others have already mentioned many train scenes.
One rarely seen film that is full of trains is /Tooi ippon no michi
("The Far Road") -- /actress Hidari Sachiko's 1977 debut film as a
director in a narrative about a stationmaster's family.
Speaking of Hidari, I recall train scenes in her 1955 film for Tasaka
Tomotaka /Jochukko ("The Maid's Kid")/
And then there's Ichikawa's 1957 /Mannin Densha ("A Full-Up Train")
/and the unforgettable train scene at the beginning of the various
different film versions of Kawabata Yasunari's novel /Yukiguni ("Snow
Country"), /and the long journey in Yamada Yoji's /Kazoku ("Family")./
Just about every Japanese film with the word /"furusato" (hometown) /in
the title has a train journey in it and a nostalgic journey home.
//
Some other memorable Japanese train stations appear in Imamura Shohei's
1955 /Nishi-Ginza Eki-mae ("In Front of Nishiginza Station") /and
Toyoda Shiro's 1955 /Mugi-bue ("Grass Whistle") /
Not exactly a station, but the final scenes of Shinoda Masahiro's
beautiful 1977 film /Hanare-goze Orin ("Banished Orin" or "Melody in
Gray") /show railroad track being laid in a steep mountain pass (and I
also recall several trains-in-the landscape scenes in that film as Orin
travels through Tsuruga and Ura-Nippon.
There's also a powerful train scene at the end of Kobayashi's great (but
rarely seen) 1968 film /Nihon no seishun ("Youth of Japan" /or /"Diary
of a Tired Man")./
//
One odd sequence involving train stations is the party scene in
Kurosawa's 1993 film /Maada-dayo ("Not Yet"), /at which a drunken
partygoer takes it upon himself to recite the names of every train
station on the main train line from the north of Hokkaido to the very
south of Kagoshima.
And don't forget Kurosawa's script /Runaway Train, /which was finally
made into a movie of the same name in 1985, directed by Andrei
Konchalovsky and starring Jon Voight.
//
It's hard to know where to stop listing train scenes in Japanese films.
There are many, many, many more.....!
Peter Grilli
What a great article! I immediately thought of Galaxy Express 999 (Ginga tetsudo 999) and Night on the Galactic Railway, both narratives centered on train travel.
There is also a silent film that recently (within last 3-4 years?) surfaced, Tokkyu sanbyakku ri (Nikkatsu Kyoto, 1928) with some pretty good on-the-tracks action. If you're really nostalgic for old trains, Nijo station in Kyoto is the place to go--you'll feel like you died and went to heaven, and you can also pick up some great train documentaries (VHS when I got them but maybe now DVD too) with titles like "Japan's Steam Locomotives" (footage from NHK archives).
Joanne Bernardi
--
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The Telepathic Motion Picture of THE LOST TRIBES {in 2008, finally}:
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David Blair
blair at telepathic-movie.org