Tora-san Goes Religious? (32)

Yoji Yamada's 32nd episode in the Tora-san series, Tora-san Goes Religious (1983) is another strong entry in the series. In the pre-credits dream sequence Tora (Kiyomi Atsumi) is a fly on the wall of sequence where he sees a different Tora-like man getting married. This film finds Tora-san in Takahashi, Okayama (which is the home of Bichu Matsuyama Castle)-the birth place of his sister Sakura's (Chieko Baisho) husband Hiroshi (Gine Maeda), where plans to visit Hiroshi's father's (played in an earlier episode by Kurosawa regular Takeshi Shimura) grave. While he is there he meets the temple priest (Tatsu Matsumoto) coming home drunk from a service and invites Tora back to his place. It turns out that he has a pretty divorced daughter, Tomoko (Keiko Takeshita) and a rebellious son Kazumichi (Kichi Nakai) living with him. He's too hung over the next day to perform a service, so Tora goes in his stead and is a big hit. He sticks around for a while as the priest's disciple-even sitting in on Hiroshi's father's anniversary service, Afterwards, Hiroshi and his siblings argue about what to do with the father's home. The oldest wants to preserve it-and Hiroshi seems to side with him-but the other two siblings want to sell it and spend the money. Later the priest and Kazumichi argue about his future, so he leaves to go to Tokyo to become a photographer-leaving behind a girlfriend (Kaoru Sugita). Tora advises her to chase Kazumichi and they later reunite at Toraya. Soon Tomoko comes to Tokyo to see if she chased off Tora, but as usual he cannot act on her ope to marry. He's off again for the Seto Inland sea.