Trains in Japanese films carry the characters, and often the story, from one place to another. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hours is one such example. While Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films often feature trains, it is Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) that stands out for me.
In the film, which is one of my favourite Kurosawa films along with Ikiru (1952), we see the wealth inequality in a Japan that was rapidly industrialising. The Japanese title of the film, Tengoku to Jigoku meaning heaven and hell, more aptly represents how the rich and the poor were affected by the inequality, and what might have prompted a poor person to attempt a kidnapping of a rich child. Kurosawa visually captures the inequality by positioning the house of the rich at a higher elevation, visible to the rest of the town.1 It is as if the rich inhabitants of the house look down on the rest. As one character looking at the house from below says, “that house gets on your nerves.”
Not just the house, the trains in the film further help us see the inequality: who uses which train and who lives near the tracks exposed to the noise.2 Kurosawa shows them in a manner that respects the audience. This respect is also evident when Kurosawa explains and shows the details of the trains that would interest engineers.
We see two train services in the film. The Kodama limited express service that was operational till September 1964 and the Enoden line that is still in operation. The Kodama limited express service, between Tokyo and Osaka, was replaced by the Tokaido Shinkansen service with the same name Kodama, meaning echo, in October 1964 before the Olympics in Tokyo began.
But Kurosawa’s film was released in 1963, before Shinkansen was deployed. As with the Shinkansen today, the limited express trains were the most expensive train option in Japan at that time that were most likely not affordable to many in Japan. In the film, the rich person and the police use the limited express train, while the kidnapper drives a small car to the location to pick up the ransom.
Not only do we learn that these trains were usually on time, like the Shinkansen these days, we also learn a consequential detail about the 151 series trainsets used by the limited express train seen in the film: the opening of the toilet window on these trainsets are 2.75 inches wide. And no other windows on the train open. The kidnapper in the film demands that the ransom amount is filled in suitcases with a maximum width of 2.75 inches so that the suitcases can be dropped out of the moving train. The kidnapper with the knowledge of the constraint of these trains gets the ransom and makes it harder for the police to capture him.
When the police try to identify a train based on the sound they hear on a phone call from the kidnapper, a specialist tells them
[The sound] isn’t a pantograph trolley. It’s an old style, single-pole trolley. Only the Enoden line [in Kanagawa prefecture] uses those old lines nowadays. Plus, their line has a lot of curves, and they use short rails with lots of joints. Also, the wheelbase is narrow, so it goes [makes a howling sound] instead of [gatan goton]
Unlike the Kodama limited express, the Enoden line is a slow train—some might say tram—that runs between Kamakura and Fujisawa travelling close to houses. Kurosawa shows us that the kidnapper lived close to the tracks. But the camera also shows us the details that this specialist describes.
We see a 100 series rolling stock, number 107, with a single trolley pole used on the Enoden line at that time. We also see the trolley pole in detail, as it collects current from the overhead wires. While trolley poles are not used on the Enoden line these days, they can still be seen in other parts of the world, for example, some of the streetcars in Toronto and tram line 28E in Lisbon.