Toi ippon no michi

Vulnerability and Resistance: Satako (played by Sachiko Hidari), her husband Ichizo and their children live in a poor railway settlement – the less flattering side of the Japanese economic miracle. Ichizo works doing line maintenance for the Japanese railway company. Satako attempts to improve the family’s meagre income with part-time work and to endure her husband’s outbreaks of rage in stoical fashion. When Ichizo’s job falls victim to automatization, the son and daughter dare to rebel against the patriarch. Hidari’s nuanced, virtuoso film was financed by the National Railways Workers Union.