HANKYU DENSHA

Hankyu Densha is a film directed by Miyake Yoshihige that was screened at the Japanese film festival in Melbourne 2011. The name Hankyu refers to a large company based in Osaka that consists of a department store chain, a railway company and some real estate developments. The central setting of the film is the local Imazu Line of the Hankyu Railway, which runs in the Hyogo prefecture connecting the cities of Nishinomiya and Takarazuka.

The film consists of series of episodes that connect the lives of a number of women and men who catch the train. As their lives intersect, the carriages in which people’s lives are contained briefly allow for these characters to share their experiences and draw strength from each other often in very difficult circumstances. There is a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship, her boyfriend exploding violently in the train on one particular trip. A high school student whose self-worth is being questioned as she doubts that she can enter the university of her dreams and then there is the young school girl who is being bullied by her ‘friends’. An older woman played by the actress Miyamoto Nobuko, wife of the now deceased film-maker Itami Juzo, takes pity on the young girl and gives her some encouragement. This leads to a chain reaction in which each of the characters is inspired by the actions of one of the others to take control of their lives. Of most interest to me in the film is how the film-makers break down the compartmentalised nature of Japanese behaviour to kick start positive change in their lives.

As a foreigner I have often been struck by the ability of the Japanese to compartmentalise their behaviour. Sometines this is a strength, for example, I saw some street peformers in Tokyo who, once their act was finished, packed up their gear and then blended back into the crowd as they made ther way to the subway station. At other imes it is a great weakness, for example, on the Midosuji line (an underground line in Osaka) I watched as a homeless man rubbed himself up against a female passenger to her obvious distress but nobody did anything. I was the only foreigner in the train and felt that I shouldn't intervene. I looked around the carriage but everybody else just kept minding their own business. After what seemed like an eternity the young woman moved away. At the next station another young woman got on the train and the same thing started all over again. The homeless man knew that he was invisible, an outcast, and as a result he could do anything he liked because no-one else was going to acknowledge his existence.  At a station in Tokyo I once came down an elevator and a homeless man was collapsed in a heap at the bottom. The commuters just lifted their feet up and walked over him. A friend in Tokyo saw something similar. A business man started giving some unwanted attention to a female primary school student on the train. She intervened, however, and made him stop. The next day, on her way home from work, she got off at the station at the same time she always did and the girl was there with her mother at the turnstile waiting to thank her. In hindsight I should have been equally proactive but I guess a primary school student is not able to assert herself in the same way that a young adult can. These sorts of behaviours have since led to the establishment of female only carriages on Japanese trains. This partly stops the problem but the film Hankyu Densha explores how people can stop yruning a blind eye to what is going on around them and in that sense it is a very powerful and liberating film.