A Full-Up Train (1957)

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.