Ten to sen (aka 'Points and Lines' or 'Point and Line') (点と線) (1958)

Seiichi Matsumoto's mystery, a mere slip of a book written in the spare style of Simenon, is in some ways the counter to Hitchcock's A Lady Vanishes - instead of disappearing from a train, here one character steadfastly appears on one while detectives suspect he was elsewhere - but to say more would ruin the surprise of both the book and this faithful 1958 adaptation that opens with a Vertigo-style animated journey across the points and lines of a train map set to a jaunty discordant thriller score, barrels like an express train through its mystery, and ends with a solution to an impossible crime as ingenious as it is simple, hinging on a trick that is uniquely Japanese - there'll never be a Western adaptation! 

★★★★★

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Stray Dog (野良犬) (1949)

A rookie cop in post-war Japan seeks to recover his stolen colt pistol and ends up involved in a manhunt for a murderer in this Akira Kurosawa police-procedural noir classic - said by some to be the first buddy cop movie - a richly detailed depiction of daily Japanese life but also revealing of the extent of Japanese society's code of individual responsibility, suggesting that when responsibility is left to slip, stray dogs turn rabid.

★★★★★

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Ikimono no Kiroku (aka 'Record of a Living Being' and 'I Live In Fear') (1955)

The family of a foundry owner seeks to declare him mentally incompetent to prevent him squandering the family fortune on his plans, out of fear of the hydrogen bomb, to emigrate to Brazil, in this Kurosawa drama about fear and self-interest in post-war Japan.

★★★★☆

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