The comic yet quite moving story of a once wayward youth turned itinerant peddler who returns to his suburban Tokyo hometown only to find he still does not quite fit in, Tora-san, Our Lovable Tramp injected a new vitality into the shoshimin eiga with its richly detailed depiction of the working-class community living in the shadows of the local Buddhist temple. The figure of Tora-san was the invention of writer-director Yamada Yoji, who created his character first for a popular TV series before adapting his story for the big screen. As Tora-san, Atsumi Kiyoshi boldly embodied a rough-around-the-edges everyman (with hints of yakuza experience) that proved so wildly popular, Shochiku created what would become the longest film series in the history of world cinema, with forty-eight Tora-san features made (and all but two directed by Yamada) until Kiyoshi’s death in 1996. Shochiku has generously gifted to the Harvard Film Archive a beautiful vintage 35mm print.