Japan’s beloved wanderer comes to Bangkok
The Japan Foundation in Bangkok is screening the films of beloved screen star Kiyoshi Atsumi throughout April. The actor died in 1996. The free screenings are at 6.30pm with Thai subtitles.
On April 7 it’s “Tora-san Goes North”, directed by Yoji Yamada in 1987. This is one of the great series of movies in which Atsumi played the perpetual wanderer, here ending up on the picturesque Shiretoko Peninsula and learning of an elderly veterinarian’s secret love for a restaurateur. Though bumbling and shy, Tora-san manages to make their relationship blossom.
Tora-san was a roaming knickknack peddler with a big heart, whose meandering always evoked nostalgia for small-town traditions. Atsumi played the character from the original “Otoko wa Tsurai yo” in 1969 to the 48th in 1995, the year before he died. Many Japanese felt that Tora-san himself had died.
The April 21 screening is “Tora-san Forbidden Love” from 1984, a time when Japan’s economy was booming. In this one, Tora-san gets drunk with a hard-working company man and is invited back to his pal’s home in Ibaraki Prefecture. When the man, under terrific pressure at work, disappears, Tora-san helps his wife find the man, while secretly hoping she doesn’t, since he’s fallen in love with her.
On April 28 it’s “Tora-san Hearts and Flowers” from 1982, and again our hero falls in love, this time with a woman who works as a maid for a famous ceramic artist. Will pottery or hearts get broken first?
