• check out my Youtube edit: train scenes in Japanese films
Japan is obsessed with trains. Or at least, their films are. Having seen over 100 Japanese films, the most unmissable thing out of all, in terms of a narrative device, is the use of trains. Although they do look absolutely gorgeous, trains are not just some shiny aesthetic, they are used creatively to convey the emotions of the characters and move the story forward.

Let’s start with Strobe Edge. The opening shot itself summarizes the entire film— Kasumi Arimura rolls her fingers into a tiny circle and places it in front of her eyes, finally removing all the distractions of a packed train to pigeonhole her school crush, sitting far away in the neighboring compartment, into her kaleidoscopic world. She then gets up and walks towards the door in front of him— here they are just the two, with no one but a door separating them. Throughout the film, she is seen running— running down stairs, running on the platform, always running towards him, just like chasing a train. Her crush embodies the train that she keeps missing. Trains also provide a welcome escape to their blossoming love story, away from the class and school where everyone’s eyes are on them. 

It’s funny how trains can be symbols of emptiness and privacy but in totally different ways. While Strobe Edge shows how a packed train full of strangers can become their own world, just by dreaming a little, Shunji Iwai’s characters are always inside actual empty trains. Shunji Iwai’s films feel like a hazy memory with disconnected fragments from the past, tethered together. And characters who are lost. Or they want to be.

Hana & Alice are living in their own world; within the city, they own the beach, the crossroad, the footpath, and of course the trains. It’s as if they don't even care about the rest of the world, and are just busy playing their little games. And so, they are never sitting quietly when commuting, they are always up to something. Peeping at a crush. Tapping the glass windows. 

But the kids in All About Lily Chou Chou can’t afford to play games. A film so honest and raw in its depiction about the cruelty of adolescence that you can practically feel loneliness crying out from the screen. So, here too, the train is an escapism for him and his friend (Yu Aoi), there’s no bullies, no pain, just you and me and our music. But there’s a sense of sadness too — we know that their train commute, just like that song, that album, won’t last long. Their escape is just temporary. 

The girl in Strobe Edge wants to reach the destination, but just keeps missing the train. The people in Shunji Iwai are hoping to escape the loops they are stuck in, but can’t, even when on a train. 

In Ritual, again, trains are a central motif. Her ritual involves lying between the railroad tracks and dreaming to be crushed between 2 passing trains. At home, they build and play with model trains. Even for their date, they take a train ride to an abandoned train station. Trains represent an ironic reality – how they channel change and growth – but our protagonists are stuck; wishing to escape, hoping to be like the trains they are obsessed with.

The singular appearance of a train in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse is for a similar purpose. He has found someone he can hope to share his future with. But the city around them is turning into a ghost. So, they take a train to escape this world. It is here where we see the most poignant moment in the film— she slowly lays her head on his shoulder. It was beautiful, tender, but sadly, it was never meant to last long. 

Haru is quite literally one of my (if not the) favorite films ever. And so in an era when smartphones didn’t exist, when social media wasn’t even a word, it is through some film messaging platform that they connect. She lives in a town far away. He lives in the biggest metropolitan city in the world. They will get 1 chance to capture a memory and save it for the rest of their lives— a picture of the invisible one who has allured them like nothing else, and a train journey through time. Thank God, that Shinkansen exists, or else how would I have seen one of the best scenes in cinema history?

Romantic films like Let Me Eat Your Pancreas, We Made A Beautiful Bouquet and Even If This Love Disappears From The World Tonight, just need an excuse to shoot a scene inside a train. There’s just something so romantic about 2 people either next to each other or facing each other, sharing moments, laughs, against a backdrop of the city. But more importantly, it's used to create a sense of organic intimacy, an excuse to come closer.

For the leads that were locked in the countryside setting of A Gentle Breeze In The Village, we were waiting for that moment of intimacy. We knew it was coming, they had a sexual tension, a bubbling chemistry but in such a small village, you can always bump into someone, so their train trip away from the town is when we finally get it— what’s cuter than holding hands!

There’s a train scene in every single Hirokazu Kore Eda film. That’s the first scene he writes in the script hahaha. And it makes perfect sense, coz his films are about either 

a) found families — (Shoplifters, Broker, Our Little Sister, Like Father Like Son)

b) broken families — (Still Walking, After The Storm, I Wish, Nobody Knows) 

And what’s a better symbolic imagery for both these types than trains? Trains, where strangers are all together, locked into a vacuum, not by their choice but by chance. And Trains, where humanity is seen as a disconnected hive. Everyone is cornered into their own groups, everyone is a stranger. 

If I write about the train imagery in Happy Hour, it would gobble up everything else in this essay. So, you can just check out my review for Happy Hour where I talk about it in detail.

Then there’s the genre of “journey films” or “self-discovery”. Every Ryutaro Nakagawa film has loss or life after the death of a loved one as the central theme and then it follows the lead character on a search. In Mio On The Shore, the train scene and that book that she reads while in it, later on becomes the most pivotal moment of the film through the quote. But the most gorgeous one has to be One Day You Will Reach The Sea — she is reaching for the oceans that took away her best friend in the tsunami. Her journey includes a train, where looking through the window she reminisces about her trip with Sumire. 

Trains are beautiful because there’s nothing that makes humans feel more alive than being on a journey. Maybe, the people in these films want to be alive too. They surely are, at least to me.