A Full-Up Train (1957)

This screening will be introduced by Assistant Professor Zhao Xinyi from the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore.

Director: Kon Ichikawa

Runtime: 99 mins

Country: Japan

Language: Japanese with English subtitles

Rating: PG

Synopsis

In The Full-Up Train , fresh graduate Tamio Moroi works as a white-collar employee at a brewery in Osaka, where he is taught to do little more than pretend to be busy. After learning about his mother’s deteriorating mental condition, he struggles to send money to fund research into her condition. He becomes caught in a series of mishaps that stress and push him to the brink.

The film’s depiction of the rapidly changing rhythms of postwar life offers an almost clinical critique of the relentless march toward industrialisation. The film had an obvious influence on its assistant director, Yasuzō Masumura, whose own corporate comedies, including Giants and Toys (1958) and The Black Test Car (1962), owe much to its acerbic satire.

About the Speaker

Zhao Xinyi (Ch. 赵心怡) is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed in Japanese Studies and Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 2025. Her teaching and research focus on the film and media histories of Japan and China. Her current book project, Cinema in Search of a Nation: Media Culture and the Making of Manchuria , examines how cinema participated in the formation of colonial Manchuria and its postwar afterlives. She has also published on Teshigahara Hiroshi’s film Woman in the Dunes (1964) and women pioneers in Japanese cinema.

This screening is part of the programme Twin Tales: Kon Ichikawa and Yasuzo Masumura. For more screenings, please click here .

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