Otoko wa Tsurai yo or the Tora-san series is considered the longest running live action film series in the world with fifty feature entries. Starting as a television show in the late 60s, Kuruma Torajiro quickly became a central figure of Shochiku’s productions for nearly thirty years. With bi-annual releases around the New Year holiday and late summer festivals Tora-san serves as a consistent media property tied to family gatherings and generational change. Using a studio and media industries analysis of the latter portion of films produced in the bubble era (from the mid-1980s until the series end) provides a through-line for this talk that will explore changing dynamics of marketing and production patterns throughout the Bubble Era. The Tora-san films are also a benchmark of classic studio filmmaking in a time defined by increased co-productions, boutique studios, and a re shuffling of major studio control during one of the most dynamic and gaudy periods of personal consumption and desire in the postwar Japan.
Patrick Terry serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Film at Portland State University since 2018. He completed his dissertation work on domestic studio disruption from the late 1960s to the early 1990s at the University of Kansas exploring the intersection of art and industry. He is currently researching and writing on the impact of Kadokawa Pictures marketing and production had on the film industry in the 1980s during the heyday of the Bubble Era.