Tora-san" and the Perfumed Society - Reality of the 1920s and the Imagination of the Movies

Tora-san" and the Perfumed Society - Reality of the 1920s and the Imagination of the Movies

Director Yoji Yamada's "Otoko wa Tsuraiyo" (The Man with the Tiger's Turban), the first film in the series, was released in 1969 and is known as a national symbol of Japan's postwar era. The main character, Tora Jiro, was portrayed as a "perfectionist" who travels around the country with only a leather trunk and does business at will. His humane way of life was accepted by many viewers as a symbol of "freedom" and "commonness. However, this cinematic image was an idealized fiction, far removed from the real-life society of the 1920s.

In those days, when a kaguishi set up a stall at a fair or festival, he or she always belonged to an organization called a "clan" or "kumiai," and operated his or her business under the control of the clan. The stalls that lined the festival grounds and the streets were controlled by the local kagushi family, and no one was allowed to open a stall without the permission of the head of the family. In other words, the society was based on a "boss-and-son system," and there was almost no room for free loners to do business as they pleased.

This was due to the rapid urbanization and expansion of popular culture from the late Meiji to the Taisho period. City festivals and freak shows attracted huge crowds, and the police, the kaguji organizations, and even the gangs of pugilists and yakuza became intricately intertwined over the rights to the festivals and shows. The kaguishi were not mere merchants, but were part of a web of order and control, especially during the 1920s, when socialist ideology and labor movements were on the rise, and in the chaotic period following the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923), the kaguishi played a direct role in the lives of ordinary people and in the order of the city.

Given this historical background, the movie "Tora-san" is a false image that projects the "lost freedom of the common people" sought by audiences in postwar society, while at the same time underlining the image of the real-life perfume maker. While the real-life KAGUSHIKI was dominated by his boss and lived between the confines of the organization and the police force, Tora-san on the screen transcended this image and was reconstructed as the "free passerby" that the common people yearned for.