(http://www.tora-san.jp/index.html : Japanese Movie Hero "Tora-san" with his half-sister "Sakura-chan" living around the Taisyakuten Temple, Tokyo)A Real Man Laughs and Forgives
The Japanese film series "Otoko-wa Tsurai-yo" (A Real Man Laughs and Forgives) started in 1969 and ended in 1995 as the actor Kiyoshi Atsumi who played the hero “Torajiro” died in 1996, though the director of the title Mr. Yoji Yamada seems to be still active in this industry.
Around 1969 in Japan, one of the remarkable trends in the film industry is a kind of boom around gangster movies.
The background of the era is of course characterized by the global turmoil of the world in 1960’s: the JFK Assassination, the Robert Kennedy Assassination, the Vietnam War, Israel-Arab wars, the Cold War backed by nuclear-warhead intercontinental missiles, and student movements here and there.
Especially, anti-Vietnam War movements drove students into a clash with the police on the street in Tokyo, Paris, and some major cities in the U.S.
In Japan in those days, gangster movies flourished. A handsome “Yakuza” and a dangerously attractive woman on a silver screen enchanted the audience. Indeed it was an era when color TVs were being commercialized.
The director Mr. Yoji Yamada, a graduator of the top university in Japan, however made a kind of comic film featuring Kiyoshi Atsumi who looked like everybody on the street in a downtown of Tokyo.
The hero “Tora the Vagabond” is not a kind of man a career woman would ever respect in whatever sense.
Tora-san has however a keen insight into human nature. He is not a type of man who lies to, betrays, and sells his friend to make big money. He is a kind of man who never hides his anger against those who return evil for good.
The gangster movies that flourished so much in the Japanese society in 1960’s were full of violence exercised by men and women who loved to return evil for good or violently return good for evil for impossibnle honor or chivalry.
A movie theater where a "Yakuza" film was being played was covered by suppressed darkness; but a movie theater where a “Tora-san” film was being played was filled with laughing and smiling.
From 1970’s to 1980’s, ordinary citizens, poor people, and students in Japan gradually left and forgot bloody, desperate, and intoxicating gangster films which were literally fading away along with the memory of the anti-Vietnam War movement; but the "Tora-san" series remained, gaining more fans while TV stations completely overwhelmed the film industry.
Even a first-rate university asked students taking an entrance examination why "Tora-san" never got on a Shinkanse super-express train while peddling and traveling all over Japan.
Indeed, "Tora-san" never drove a Benz with a suspicious car registration plate on.
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While the Tora-san series of the movie was enjoying unfaltering support from the general public, Osamu Tezuka was suffering, since his manga or comic works and animations could not appeal to people any more, though his previous comics for boys and girls established his status as the king of manga in Japan.
How Osamu Tezuka addressed this challenge in early 1970’s is, though, another story, since he died in 1989 leaving a huge volume of manga art, including a story of Buddha and an Old Testament story.
Nonetheless, I think that the movie director Mr. Yoji Yamada and the late Mr. Tezuka Osamu have had something in common: a detestation of the Mafia.
That is all for today.
Yes, I saw the TV news presenting Ms. Caroline Kennedy waking up the ladder into an air plane following Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton and being followed by Mr. Barack Obama.
She may be the last work of the modern history since 1960’s as there are so many fans of the Kennedys in Japan.
http://kennedy.exblog.jp/i13
(A more suitable theme tune for Tora-san as he loves a joke like you:
http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/j-folk0/wakamonotachi.html )
Mar 7:11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.
Mar 7:12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;
Mar 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.