The Bullet Train

1/16/2022

In the early 70s, disaster movies started gaining popularity with the likes of <i>Airport</i> (1970), The <i>Poseidon Adventure</i> (1972), <i>The Towering Inferno </i>(1974), and <i>Earthquake</i> (1974). These movies killed it at the domestic and international box offices. Toei, one of the Big Four Japanese film studios at the time, noticed and wanted to take advantage of the trend. Japan’s famous bullet train system’s first two rail lines, Tokaido and San'yō, were opened in 1964 and 1972, respectively. The mode of travel was, to that point, synonymous with Nippon, so the Toei execs wanted to try and use the iconic Shinkansen. They brought in journeyman director/writer, Jun’ya Satô to help adapt Arei Katô’s book into the first big Japanese disaster movie (non-Kaiju). Satô wrote the first