Shinkansen Daibakuha

[Granville Turley]

Uponreading this book, you would be excused for thinking that riding the shinkansen is like travelling on some kind of noisy bucking bronco. Hardly a chapter goes by without the description of the train jumping around, someone falling, and for there to be noises from the line or train. While the deck area, the only place where phone calls are acceptable on Japanese trains (as I have discussed in my book Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan), can be a bit noisier than the main carriage, the descriptions of the movements and noise are a serious exaggeration in my view, and for those used to the much louder and jerky motions of trains in the UK, for example, not helpful.

The next problem I have with the book is the way that time stretches and shortens. This can be a problem with many books and films, and the TV-series 24 has been one of the few to try to address the issue head on. The frustration with this issue, particularly when it comes to something as regular as a shinkansen service, annoys me so much that when I wrote my novel Hijacking Japan, I developed a way to try to keep a real time element to it. Given the massive variation between how long the train takes to get between Ueno and Omiya and then Sendai and Morioka, for example, Bullet Train could have done with something similar.

As the cover clarifies, the book is being made into a movie and the details are already on IMDb. Looking through the cast list, it becomes clear that the movie will be a big departure from the original book since the characters are predominantly non-Japanese. Seemingly, while the world is sophisticated enough to read translations of Japanese books, movies have to patronise us with predominantly American actors. I suspect I will watch it. I may even enjoy it. But there is a large part of me that hopes that it is rubbish. (On a side note, it is ironic that Sandra Bullock of Speed fame is in the movie, as that movie seemed to borrow a key storyline from the previous Bullet Train book and movie as I pointed to in my novel Hijacking Japan).

3a8082e126