Tora-san's Island Encounter (36)

Yoji Yamada's 36th installment of the Tora-san series, Tora-san's Island Encounter (1985) is something of an homage to Keisuke Kinoshita's adaptation of a popular novel-Twenty-Four Eyes. The original film was the story of a popular young teacher who taught school on a small island in the Inland Sea prior to WWII. After the war there's a reunion and some of the children were killed in the war and suffered because of it. In Yamada's version, Tora (Kiyoshi Atsumi) is sent to bring back Tako's (Hsiao Dazai) willful runaway daughter Akemi (Jun Miho), who is holed up in the resort town of Shimoda in  Shizuoka. She convinces Tora to go with her to a nearby island, Shikine jima. Tora meets a group of eleven students who are planing a reunion party with their former teacher Machiko (Koamki Kurihara), he jokes that with him they have "24"-well maybe "23 1/2" eyes, with his beady eyes. He ignores Akemi and ends up falling for the single teacher. Sakura (Chieko Baisho) urges Akemi to bring Tora back with her when she leaves the island. Machiko comes to Tokyo to visit her sick father and stops by Toraya and meets Tora's family but also her dead best friend's remaining family a daughter and dutiful civil service father. Before she flies back to the island via Chofu airport, she consults with Tora as to what to do and Tora gives her his blessing to get married. Off he goes on a trip and reunites with two former students from Shikine who are working as tour boat captains at Lake Yamanako. The pre-credit sequence has Tora become the first Japanese man in space wearing setta-traditional Japanese sandals. There's a funny little aside that has the High Priest (Chsihu Ryu) giving directions to the station in nonsensical English-"Was that English? I don't know." And Sakura praises him for his excellent English.