A man operates a small real estate business near Osaka. A man from Tokyo asks for help in buying a large tract of land in order, he says, to build an automobile factory. But by accident the realtor learns that the Tokaido Railway Line is going to be built directly across the land just acquired. Also known as Black Super Express
Direction
Masumura's clinical eye for masculine desperation
Acting
Jirō Tamiya's sweaty, unraveling antihero performance
Cinematography
Train-as-doom imagery that Hitchcock would steal
Director
Yasuzō Masumura
Jirō Tamiya
Keiichi Kikyo
Yukiko Fuji
Yoko Tamaru
Eiji Funakoshi
Masayoshi Zaitsu
Daisuke Katō
Yukichi Nakae
Jōtarō Senba
Fujio Harumoto
Kobayashi
Tatsuya Ishiguro
Kudo
Yūzō Hayakawa
Kada
Kichijirō Ueda
Hotel owner
Manabu Morita
Detective A
Eiichi Takamura
Daito
Kenji Oyama
Shinkansen Public Corporation doorman
Shizuo Chūjō
Securities company employee
Hiroko Machida
Hiroko Naganuma
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Masumura made this during his 'black' period, obsessed with men destroyed by their own ambition — he called it 'the Japanese disease.'
The Tokaido Shinkansen was actually under construction in 1964; this film channels real anxiety about Japan's breakneck modernization.
JP
