Asian Studies Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Asian Studies Theses and Dissertations by Author "Ghandour, Fawzi Rami"

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    Tora-San, Wish You Were Here: Nostalgic Filmmaking In The World’s Longest Film Series
    (University of Oregon, 2022-10-26) Ghandour, Fawzi Rami; Freedman, Alisa
    The longest film series to feature the same actor, the It’s Tough Being a Man film series, known to fans as the Tora-san series, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with the release of its fiftieth installment, Tora-san, Wish You Were Here (2019). Released twenty-two years after the previous entry and the death of its main actor, this film takes a nostalgic look back on the franchise in the absence the titular Tora-san by a particular technique of inserting scenes from previous films in the series as memories of the film’s main characters. I argue that the film uses its cinematic form to engage with nostalgia in three forms in order to bring Tora-san back. The first is by engaging with the cinematic image cultivated by the series during Japan’s high-growth and bubble economy eras, an image that is defined by Tora-san’s complex character and depictions of vanishing spaces in modern Japan. The second is the use of self-referentiality in the film, adopting the narrative formula of the previous films as well as rooting the cinematic world into the present. Thirdly, the techniques of filmmaking itself are used to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. Through these analyses, I engage with a notion of nostalgic filmmaking and suggest a larger discourse on the connection between cinema and memory within this product of Japanese popular culture.