Murder on the Last Train (1955)

Original title: 終電車の死美人

A young women is found murdered on the last train to Mitaka, Tokyo. Tokyo’s Showa era murder squad springs into action.

The film follows the case’s investigation, the police slowly uncovering the victim’s identity, checking out witness statements and turning over every stone to uncover a rather messy situation.

Tsuneo Kobayashi’s film is usually treated as Japan’s first proper police procedural, and the film Toei’s successful and pretty long running Police Precinct series of films would model itself after, with an attempt to portray police procedure as it would be used in its time and place realistically. Of course, these are not films portraying or interested in the politics or ethics of policing, and they also don’t spend much time on the dozen or so coppers’ personalities. Today, you’d probably be tempted to call it copaganda, but given the temporal gap between the then and the now, you might also see this as a portrayal of how proper police work should be done by the standards of Showa era Japan.

Keeping this approach from becoming too abstract or clinical are three elements. First, there’s a script by Shin Morita that’s trying to be realistic towards the shoe leather aspects of policing but also knows what to cut – we aren’t shown the pointless witness interviews but only those that actually deliver some new facts or insights, and we are given to understand how much drudgery an investigation entails but don’t have to take part in it. When necessary, the film isn’t afraid to become dramatic either, so particularly once we move towards the climax, there are moments of tension here – this is still supposed to entertain an audience, after all.

Secondly, Kobayashi’s direction effortlessly moves between framing scenes in a semi-documentary style and expressionist flourishes that can turn even a simple witness interview dramatic and interesting to look at. While this idealized version of the police doesn’t do police brutality, the direction often suggests the threat of violence. Interviews with potential criminals are always shot with the cops crowding their victim and shot in angles that see them tower over it in a very Universal horror monster kind of manner.

Thirdly, while there’s no depth to the police roles, the ensemble – after the manner of Japanese studio cinema – do provide anchors of humanity that suggest people and not automatons, which is more than enough to make the material come to life.

And, if you’re like me, it’s genuinely interesting to witness an attempt at a realistic portrayal of Post-War Tokyo of the times made for a local audience. Murder presents a wealth of cultural details history books usually don’t provide, particularly because it focusses on the parts of society history books have historically ignored. It’s not a documentary, of course, but it’s of highest interest nonetheless.