Tora-san's Promise (28)

In Yoji Yamada's 28th installment of the Tora-san series, Tora-san's Promise (1981) we find Tora (Kiyosmui Atsumi) in a reflective mood once again. The pre-credits sequence imagines a Nobel Prize winning Tora surgeon with a taste for tonaktsu pork. While Tora was in Akizuka, a small castle town in Fukuoka, Kyushu, traveling around he befriends a bubbly teenage runaway Aiko (Kayoko Kishimoto), daughter of a fisherman, from Yaizu, Shizuoka. She joins Tora-san and he has her help him with sales.  While in Akizuka he meets the wife, Mitsue (Mikako Otonashi) of an old friend, Tsuneyoshi (Shoichi Ozawa) he fidn tha thsi friend is on  his death bed. Tora visits and he asks Tora to marry his wife if he dies and Tora agrees.  Tora is somewhat shaken and returns to Tokyo leaving Aiko behind. Eventually Tsuneyoshi dies and his wife returns to Tokyo and pays respect to Tora. Tora has marriage aspirations which are crushed when she reveals that she has found out about her husbands wishes and is insulted by them. Maiko also returns to Tokyo and Tora, but her macho fisherman half-brother, (Takeo Chi) comes to fetch her and she caves in after a violent scenes at Toraya. Yet another solid entry inteh Tora-san saga.