Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Mary Steenburgen in Back to the Future Part III (1990)

"Otoko wa Tsurai yo" (男はつらいよ) a.k.a. "It's Tough Being a Man" -film series holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running movie series starring a single actor - at 50 films in 50 years, this is a record highly unlikely ever to be broken. It is also worth noting that all but two of these were directed by one director, Yôji Yamada, Japan's most productive director of all time.

Please also note that the first 49 films were released in only 28 years, between 1969 and 1997, and the last one released in 2019 on the 50th anniversary, is actually a homage to the star of these films, Kiyoshi Atsumi, who had died unexpectedly in 1996. He still appears in the film through flashbacks and previously unseen footage shot during the past years.

Complete List of Japanese "Tora-San" Films 1969-2019

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