by Chris MaGee
I remember being in Japan two years ago and during pauses in hopping trains and buses, going here and there soaking up as much as I could I’d find myself in my hotel room flipping through daytime Japanese TV. Amongst the umpteenth different panel programs and cooking shows I kept seeing movies of a middle-aged man wearing a tacky-looking checked suit, a short-brimmed fedora and tramping around in a pair of traditional wooden geta. The movies looked to be from the 60’s and 70’s, and even with my seriously stilted traveler’s Japanese I could pick out the basic story that he moved from town to town and inexplicably attracted pretty, smiling women, but by the end of each film he’d return home alone to the comfort of his home and his smiling, earthy family. Only upon my return to Toronto did I do some digging and realized I’d been introduced to the longest running film series in cinema history: “Otoko wa tsurai yo” or more popularly known as the Tora-san movies. Wildly popular in Japan, but outside of groups of dedicated Japanese cinema and culture buffs Kuruma Torajiro is virtually unknown in North America. Well, that will hopefully change this year as the Tora-san series is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and Variety Asia Online has details of how Shochiku is planning to reintroduce everyone’s favorite traveling salesman both to a younger generation in Japan and to filmgoers around the world.
First Shochiku has planned a series of screenings of the Tora-san films in North America, including a screening of the 17th film in the series “Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro yuuyake koyake (Tora-san’s Sunrise and Sunset)” here in Toronto on August 8th as part of Cinematheque Ontario’s Summer in Japan programme. They will also be remastering and rereleasing all 48 of the Tora-san films on DVD, as well as making available on DVD for the first time the original Tora-san TV series that ran from 1968-1969. Unfortunately these will only be available in Japan, but hopefully they’ll include English subtitling. Also, as The Pow-Wow reported back in April Shochiku will also be streaming the Tor-san films, along with classic films by Yasujiro Ozu and Keisuke Kinoshita, at their official site.
So, for all of you who haven’t been introduced to Tora-san before here is the first three minutes of the film that started it all “Otoko wa tsurai yo” courtesy of YouTube:
I remember being in Japan two years ago and during pauses in hopping trains and buses, going here and there soaking up as much as I could I’d find myself in my hotel room flipping through daytime Japanese TV. Amongst the umpteenth different panel programs and cooking shows I kept seeing movies of a middle-aged man wearing a tacky-looking checked suit, a short-brimmed fedora and tramping around in a pair of traditional wooden geta. The movies looked to be from the 60’s and 70’s, and even with my seriously stilted traveler’s Japanese I could pick out the basic story that he moved from town to town and inexplicably attracted pretty, smiling women, but by the end of each film he’d return home alone to the comfort of his home and his smiling, earthy family. Only upon my return to Toronto did I do some digging and realized I’d been introduced to the longest running film series in cinema history: “Otoko wa tsurai yo” or more popularly known as the Tora-san movies. Wildly popular in Japan, but outside of groups of dedicated Japanese cinema and culture buffs Kuruma Torajiro is virtually unknown in North America. Well, that will hopefully change this year as the Tora-san series is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and Variety Asia Online has details of how Shochiku is planning to reintroduce everyone’s favorite traveling salesman both to a younger generation in Japan and to filmgoers around the world.
First Shochiku has planned a series of screenings of the Tora-san films in North America, including a screening of the 17th film in the series “Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro yuuyake koyake (Tora-san’s Sunrise and Sunset)” here in Toronto on August 8th as part of Cinematheque Ontario’s Summer in Japan programme. They will also be remastering and rereleasing all 48 of the Tora-san films on DVD, as well as making available on DVD for the first time the original Tora-san TV series that ran from 1968-1969. Unfortunately these will only be available in Japan, but hopefully they’ll include English subtitling. Also, as The Pow-Wow reported back in April Shochiku will also be streaming the Tor-san films, along with classic films by Yasujiro Ozu and Keisuke Kinoshita, at their official site.
So, for all of you who haven’t been introduced to Tora-san before here is the first three minutes of the film that started it all “Otoko wa tsurai yo” courtesy of YouTube:
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