The great postwar Japanese documentary filmmaker Noriaki Tsuchimoto is known for his political activism and committed cinema, particularly in his fifteen-film Minamata series, made over forty years, that documents the effects of mercury poisoning on a Japanese fishing community. In the early sixties, he was commissioned to produce public relations films about traffic safety after a series of accidents occurred during the preparations for the Tokyo Olympic Games. Astounding still for their beauty and attention to visual detail and sound, they weren't what the sponsors anticipated. On the Road: A Document was sponsored by the traffic divison of Japan's police administration, but was never publicly released. An exquisite, lyrical film centered on a taxi driver and his family, this is ultimately an intimate portrait of the people, traffic, and sounds of Tokyo.