You cannot step in the same river twice
-Heraclitus
Travelling salesman makes his way back to his hometown after leaving in a huff twenty years earlier because of a fight he had with his father. A prodigal son story, but Tora-san is not your typical character. Vulgar, heavy drinking and incapable of following social norms, this semi failure of a salesman is a combination of Dice Clay and Forest Gump. He is exactly what his hometown needs and he gives it to them good and hard.
The creation of writer/director Yoji Yamada, Otoko wa Tsurai yo ran for an incredible 48 installments from 1969-1998. Western audiences and critics have largely failed to embrace Yamada’s masterpiece which stands in contrast to the love Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo, Seven Samurai), Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer) and other Japanese directors have received over the years. Wanting to see Japan as subtle, cinematically pleasing and inscrutable or violent and grotesque, Western audiences just couldn’t find a place in their hearts for Yamada. Otoko wa Tsurai yo presents Japanese as people with simple, base desires and flaws that are universal. Tentacle porn can be amusing, but it doesn’t really help you understand what the average Japanese person is thinking.
The plot for the 48 installments is simple: Tora-san, played by Kiyoshi Atsumi, returns to the Shibamata area of downtown Tokyo, falls in love with a woman known as the “Madonna” character and causes all hell to break loose with his antics. The “Madonna” shows interest in Tora-san, but his awkwardness with women destroys any chance he had with her and she ends up getting together with another man whom she was destined to be with. The series is a love story despite the crude jokes and domestic violence.
I am Tora-san. I may not step out of your bathroom, patting my stomach and compliment you for having the fanciest toilet I’d ever seen. “That’s the sink, you idiot!” I haven’t bitch-slapped my demure sister for no good reason other than being drunk off my ass. I’ve yet to make jizz jokes at formal dinner parties where my sister is being introduced to her ultra conservative potential in-laws. I have mistakenly asked my mother-in-law, at first meeting, if she was still born. I’ve asked the elderly check out lady at the supermarket where she kept the breast milk. (Bo-nyu is breast milk, To-nyu is soy milk. Whoops.) We all fuck up and Tora-san is a ninth degree black belt in it.
We don’t toss Tora-san in a pot of boiling water for a couple of vital reasons. First, he is an injection of chaos into what can be an oppressive and stratified group-centered society. Tora-san’s outrageous behavior gives the audience a look at the Honne (real feelings) of average people. They may look stoic, but all Japanese people have wanted to crack a relative in the head at some point. Many have a great spooge pun pop into their head during a meeting, but they keep it walled off behind their Tatemae (social face). Tora-san is a vent that releases some of the steam in a country that has 30,000 or so suicides a year. Good on him.
Another reason we accept Tora-san is that without him, the star-crossed lovers would never end up together. Love, it seems, needs someone to smack it out of its reluctance. The “Madonna” can’t hook up with her true love unless someone kicks him in the balls and tells him to stop being such a pussy. While Tora-san’s advice may be awful, following terrible advice is better than whining like a bitch in the corner.
At the end of each installment, Tora-san leaves Shibamata in an act of temporary self-exile. He has to leave of his own accord or he wouldn’t be allowed back. Pushing people to their limits and then backing off, giving them time to digest what happened, is a skill sorely missing these days. Being 100% pure, concentrated chaos, Tora-san realizes that prolonged exposure to chaos would destroy his family. He leaves Shibamata and crosses the Sumida river until his services are needed once more. You may not be able to step in the same river twice, but you can piss in it multiple times.
AAnnnnddd, he’s safe at first!
Good review. I will be digging up some of those eventually – apparently via netflix given the current DVD prices.
Have you watched the “Always” series at all? I’ve got the first two and they seemed to have performed really well domestically in Japan as a fun, sentimental nostalgia factor – but with a couple of the elements you described.
Alternatively, “Kamikaze Girls” was an awesome flick too – while director Tetsuya Nakashima seems to have been moving on a gradual downward slope in terms of negativity/mood from that amazing first entry. (still haven’t watched his most recent title).
If you enjoy a bit of a chick flick and more modern cinema I can recommend “Our Little Sister” (Japanese: 海街diary Umimachi Diary or “Seaside town diary”)
Like lots of modern Japanese cinema its shot with such limited budget compared to the US, but the focus is on the characters and story which is a pleasant change.
They may look stoic, but all Japanese people have wanted to crack a relative in the head at some point.
Are you that relative?
You left out the most important part- does Tora-san have a pixelated dick?
I thought all Japanese men did, just like Asian women and sideways vaginas.
I can confirm the later…
We are all Tora-san? Or we are all Tulpa?
Tora-san = Tulpa?
I’m still coming to terms with narrative style and the narration. Oddly the best parallel in English I can come up with is in the “Dragnet” style. Obviously the subject matter is completely different.
Try as I might I can’t get much into old Japanese cinema. Mind you I like classics like “Yojimbo” and “Seven Samurai”, but I don’t love them.
OT, and apologies to Straffin.
LT Fish –
I saw that article you posted in the am lynx from WaPo. Of course it was lacking and only skimmed the surface of the many problems in my former business. There seems to be a whole slew of articles related to trucking over at WaPo right now, probably because Bezos and the expectations of Amazon have had such a tremendous impact on trucking, that there is a new saying in the business, ‘The Amazon Effect’.
I will venture to deconstruct all of those articles this weekend and make something for the Glibertariat. I also contacted Heather Long, the young lady who wrote the article you posted here, and sent her mine from here in Glibertopia. She messaged back saying she would keep me in mind for any future things she may write.
Sorry I haven’t been around much as of late. Mrs Gordilocks, my new infant, and a new project at work have kept me so busy that I’ve barely been able to lurk here, nevermind write anything.
Straffin, I have some friends who lived in Japan for many years teaching English. I’m sure they will enjoy reading this.
Hasta
Great update Thanks! Any future appearances on that podcast? They said they wanted you back.
So, basically a libertarian Mary Sue? 😉
Actually, it soundslike a young woman I know quite well. I won’t mention any names, but she uses a handle that starts with R and ends with iven.
Isle Of Dogs is excellent.
I’ve worked for two Japanese firms and found the time spot on.
Tone
“You may not be able to step in the same river twice, but you can piss in it multiple times.”
Wise words, and advice I follow with a passion.
Geez, what an asshole! I like him.
Thanks straff for the write up!
That’s almost an alternative way to translate the title. The most logical translation is “it’s tough being a man”. But you could stretch it and say “men are painful to deal with” instead. It depends on who says it and the context.
Are these 48 installments like the Thin Man movies, where the characters are the same but with little/no continuity between installments, or is it like anime series that have multiple versions (Tenchi Myuo, Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc) that have characters with the same name/look but completely differing personality traits, plots, backstories, etc?
Heaven help, despite watching plenty of anime I never particularly cared for Evangelion or many of the other famous long running made for TV series.
The exception, mostly based on nostalgia, would be the first season of “Starblazers” or Uchuu Senkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato).
I prefer one or two course anime – it usually forces them to come up with a conclusion.
I still love Starblazers! It’s pretty funny that they were showing that to kids in the U.S. The captain was dying of radiation poisoning. The ship’s doctor was a drunk. And there was an implied love triangle between three of the ship’s crew members. All around the premise that the Earth was basically at risk of dying. I don’t know how that slipped past the censors.
I’m still trying to figure out where I can get a good Captain Okita (aka Captain Avatar) costume.
As my beard gets grayer and grayer, I might be able to pull that one off. But I lack the good captain’s girth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKe0wARmks4
Chicks dig girth.
Myrna Loy: would
Speaking of excellent Japanese movies, there is one called The Fencing Master which is definitely worth seeing. Written, but not directed, by Kurosawa.
One of my favorites was the Samurai trilogy about Musashi.
OT: People throwing hissy fits over the latest outrage etc. etc.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05/31/samantha-bee-ivanka-trump-certainly-feckless-cnt/
Bee’s biggest crime is that she’s not remotely funny even when she’s not doing #Resistance porn. In fact, except for South Park, pretty much nothing on Comedy Central (or any of its alums; Bee, Oliver et. al.) is funny anymore. It’s talentless losers endlessly circle jerking “DRUMPF STOOPID” anti-punchlines. Back during Bush the Lesser’s tenure, the Daily Show was at least sometimes funny, even as partisan as John Stuart was. Now, nothing.
Yet Trump supporters are the uncouth idiots.
There’s a documentary called “Best of Enemies” about William F. Buckley, Jr., and Gore Vidal, and what struck me watching it was how much even back then and even considering Vidal’s reputation for being effete and upper-crust he was very much about being shocking and vulgar for the sake of being shocking and vulgar. Like a rebellious teenager more than a brilliant writer.
I’ve always considered that tendency as a way to paper over a lack of talent. Richard Pryor was vulgar, but not strictly for the sake of being vulgar and had the ability to make it funny. South Park is the same. Early seasons of the Simpson, for the time, were the same.
Given progressives’ fondness for Marxian permanent revolution, anything and everything that represents traditional culture or norms is the enemy. It becomes about upping the ante bit by bit strictly for the sake of shock value and sticking it to the enemies of the revolution. It’s ISIS-like idol destruction; nihilistic vandalism. That is why explicitly lefty comics, artists, authors etc. are usually shitty. It’s possible to be a great artist who happens to be a lefty, but if your lefty politics are what animates your art, it’s probably going to suck.
Just like Myra Breckinridge, which is an absolute pile of trash. Not because it’s offensive (I’m a *very* difficult person to offend) but because it’s bad literature that has no reason to exist beyond saying bad words. It’s a five year old laughing to himself behind the shed saying all the bad words he’s not supposed to.
Richard Pryor was vulgar, but not strictly for the sake of being vulgar and had the ability to make it funny.
I’d probably put George Carlin in that camp.
George was very good at incorporating the profanity without it being the focus.
I saw a later special of his and it was a little sad to see him such an angry old man. reminded me of Lewis Black, used to be funny now too angry.
Losing your wife to a long an miserable death tends to do that to you.
I was not aware, that would explain a lot.
Google says:
Carlin’s first wife, producer Brenda Hosbrook, died on May 11, 1997 of complications from liver cancer.
He had one particularly brutal monologue about doctors in one of his later HBO specials.
Oddly, though, my mom used to work a retirement job at one of the casinos on the strip (to get out of the house for a few hours a day). Carlin was a regular customer. She said he was generally a very nice man. They used to talk about his dog.
He seemed to reserve his wrath for those that earned it.
Q, I had never heard of Myra Breckinridge before and I was much happier in that innocent time.
I looked it up and the Wikipedia plot description ruined my childhood.
Iconoclasm is easy, making it entertaining is the difficult part. As you said, a few can do it but most can’t. Certainly there has to be a reason behind the iconoclasm than just iconoclasm for its own sake.
That’s the direction visual art has gone over the last decades. Shocking and vulgar sells more than well executed.
Maybe it’s a function of my getting older, or maybe it’s that I’m so jaded, but I don’t find anything particularly entertaining about people being edgy or vulgar for its own sake. It seems like fairly often people like Bee use vulgarity as a substitute for wit, and it shows.
I don’t have much patience for people who are shocking just to be shocking, either. I never liked Marilyn Manson for that reason. His music was ok, but when he first came out his entire purpose was to offend your parents.
Comedians say fuck alot because they have no feck.
Power Lunch (b/c financial newsworthy, why?) just reported that Bee “apologized, saying comments were unacceptable.”
I’d say her comments worked like a charm; she got attention just like the kid throwing a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store.
Well, I’m sure that her show will be canceled by close of business today, because surely calling a woman a cunt is as bad if not worse than comparing a PoC to an evolved chimpanzee from a sci-fi series.
Calling another woman a cunt. Very woke.
Q is John?
talentless losers endlessly circle jerking “DRUMPF STOOPID” anti-punchlines.
As long as I’m not forced to watch, I couldn’t give a shit. Samantha Bee and those other yapping dimwits have just as much of a right to be stupid assholes as Roseanne (whom I have never liked or watched).
*I will confess to having occasionally watched Jon Stewart’s monologues way back when, and then immediately changing the channel before any of those other completely unfunny losers came on.
I watched Stewart a few times. I could see how his target audience found some of it funny. He told actual jokes. I would occasionally chuckle. From what I have seen lately it is….I am at a loss.
“Sarah Huckabee has an ugly personality” (laugh track)
“Sarah calls us hypocrites but she is the hypocrite” (laugh track)
How is that even remotely funny? “I know you are but what am I?” doesnt have the structure or logic of a joke.
I watched the first five minutes of Colbert the other day and the jokes were:
I was on vacation so I didn’t think about Trump’s penis once, a congratulations to John Bolton for not starting a war and STORMY WATCH!!!
I turned it off after that.
I dont get the Ivanka hate. I thought she was something of a progressive? Weren’t the proggies hoping she could sway her father a bit? Calling her a cunt and bashing her at every opportunity is along the lines of denigrating the voters they need for their blue wave come november. They really are unhinged. Oh well, let ’em keep it up. I encourage them to double down.
Because she doesn’t repudiate her father. Simple as that.
I do have to admit that I was impressed with her response. What can I say, a decent-looking woman quoting Aurelius is a bit of turn-on.
Not bad, she basically said Fuck you without saying fuck you.
Straff, I’ll have to ask my wife if she has heard of this, maybe her Mom watched it, but all her Dad watched was Samurai shows and baseball.
Well, the end times may be upon us.
Chelsea Clinton is actually talking sense about the whole feckless cunt kerfuffle.
At least the responding twits are mostly the kind of idiots one expects to find on twitter.
I’ve seen and enjoyed zatoichi, Lone wolf and cub, Kurasowa, miike and of course Hanzo the razor Granted Hanzo is more of a B movie.
Thanks for this review. I was unfamiliar with the films, but will probably add some to my list, if only to relive OMWC’s glory days before my civilizing influence made his life a paradise on earth.