Profile of Juzo Itami

A late bloomer who began directing at age 50, he makes movies in which the protagonist probes Japanese assumptions and practices

When something surprises Juzo Itami, he makes a movie about it. The politicking that took place in the wake of his father-in-law's death provided the idea for his first film, The Funeral. A ramen chef's exertions spawned the germ of his universally-lauded noodle western, Tampopo. Itami left recently for the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles to wait for his next surprise. "I have been thinking about a film that would explain Japan to the United States and vice versa," says the 60-year-old director, writer and producer. "Movies are a very effective means of communication. I hope to express Japanese culture to American and other audiences by making them identify with the main character."

The main character is most often Itami's Everywoman, portrayed by his gifted wife Nobuko Miyamoto. Whether playing the eponymous chef in search of the perfect ramen recipe in Tampopo, or the dogged tax inspector in A Taxing Woman and its sequel, Miyamoto is hardy, sincere and utterly free of malice. She is Itami's Candide. It is through her eyes and experience that the film maker hones in on the universal truths that have made his films successful not only in Japan, but in North America, Europe and Asia as well.

A handsome ex-actor with a craggy face, crinkly smile and long grey hair, Itami specializes in tackling weighty themes in a light-hearted manner. His sixth film, Minbo No Onna is a satirical look at the way Japanese gangsters, or yakuza, muscle in on civil disputes. His seventh and latest film, Daibyonin, tells the story of a misanthropic film director dying of cancer.

As in all of Itami's films, the protagonist in Daibyonin questions forms those around him. The shibboleth under attack is the reluctance of Japanese doctors to tell their patients the truth about their illnesses. Daibyonin raises stark questions about the blind faith doctors place in technology to extend the lives of those who might be better off dead.

Although the idea of Daibyonin came from a book by a Tokyo physician, Itami rounded out the script while recovering from an attack by three knife-wielding men near his home. The assailants--yakuza aggrieved over their depiction in Minbo No Onna--put Itami in the hospital for eight days in May 1992. The pale slash of a scar still runs across his jaw.

"I am trying to discover who I am through making movies," says Itami. "I see myself as being confined in a cage of Japanese culture and the cage of being a man. I have to look at myself from an outsider's point of view when I make my films." Itami says this helps him to refine ideas to the point where they are accessible to everyone. Then, like the cook in Tampopo, he adds a dash of adventure, a bit of eroticism and lots of humor.

"I am trying to discover whoI am through making movies."

It took Itami a long time to get to that point. Although highly prolific--he has made seven films since 1984--he only directed his first film at the age of 50. The reason, in part, was because of the legacy of his father, Mansaku Itami, a prominent pre-World War II director famous for his period dramas and his satirical humor. Mansaku was bedridden from the time that Juzo was five years old, succumbed to tuberculosis almost a decade later.

"The movies were my father's business. It was too high a mountain for me to climb," says Itami in his modest office near Tokyo's trendy Roppongi district. "But after raising two sons and reaching the apex my father did when he died, I felt I could climb the mountain."

Before that, Itami was a jack of all trades. He worked as a commercial designer, an essayist, a magazine editor and a television reporter. He also acted, mainly in television dramas, and he had parts in two big-budget early-1960s Western films, Richard Brooke's Lord Jim (in which he played a Malay village head man's son) and 55 Days in Peking, an overblown depiction of the Boxer Rebellion starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner.

Itami is a highly successful late bloomer. His films have all made a profit and all but a few have been critical successes. Several have garnered local and international awards. Yet the director is troubled by the fact that his triumphs have made it much easier to get his own movies made or for other Japanese directors to follow in his footsteps. Most of his films are still financed out of pocket, with the help of a producer, a boyhood friend.

"I wanted to set an example for other directors, to create good popular movies with only a little capital," says Itami. "I really thought there was a way. In Japan there were no producer-directors. There still aren't too many." That's why Itami set up his production company four years ago now.

Jonathan Friedland, Far Eastern Economic Review October 21 1993, v156, n42, p82.

Juzo Itami allegedly committed suicide on December 20, 1997.

January 9, 1998

A Mundane Exit for a Man Who Mocked Convention

Why did director Itami Juzo choose suicide to escape allegations he was having an affair?

By Murakami Mutsuko / Tokyo

JAPANESE MOVIE FANS ARE confounded. Why would a maverick like Itami Juzo -- a man who scoffed at the way his country was straitjacketed by convention -- do something as ritualistically Japanese as commit suicide? Even the language of his farewell note ("In death I will prove my innocence") rang of the kind of fake melodrama he had so much pleasure puncturing in his films.

But on Dec. 20 the movie director went to the roof of the eight-story building where he worked in the swish Azabudai area of Tokyo. Apparently drunk and dressed in sloppy clothes -- another departure from the norm for the dapper director -- he jumped to his death.

Itami, 64 and married, took his life two days before a weekly magazine, Flash, was to due to appear with a report that he was having an affair with a 26-year-old woman. The article featured innocent-looking black-and-white photos taken by a paparazzo of the couple walking in the street and talking in an exclusive French restaurant. The woman was not identified, but Flash said she had been brought up abroad and worked for a foreign company in Tokyo. The magazine quoted her as telling friends that Itami enjoyed "unusual sex games."

In the same article, in other interviews and in his suicide note, the director denied there was any impropriety. He said he was interviewing the woman in connection with a film he was planning on office workers. Flash said he had given her money, prompting her friends to playfully describe their relationship as enjo kosai (assisted association) -- a reference to the way Japanese schoolgirls accept gifts from older men in return for sex. Itami acknowledged he had given her money, but insisted it was a loan to help with the cost of moving home.

Flash editor Kaneto Kenji said the director had seemed relaxed when interviewed by telephone and showed no sign of desperation. "We talked directly with [him], and we included his side. We are convinced that the report is true and that our coverage is within normal practice. If that was the cause of his suicide, we deeply regret it." The editor's contrition was not enough to deflect criticism of the magazine's tactics. Commentators said Itami's death was "a tragic waste" brought about by tabloid journalism, and the publication received more than a hundred protest phone calls in one day. All 750,000 copies of Flash were sold out within hours.

Itami's wife, actress Miyamoto Nobuko, 52, who appeared in many of his films, seemed bewildered by his death. "It's as if reality and dream are all mixed up. I can only believe it had to be a big decision for him to do such a thing." Says another long-time Itami associate, actor Yamazaki Tsutomu: "He was not the kind to commit suicide for such a reason."

They are not the only ones confused. Why would an iconoclast like Itami be driven to such desperate measures by allegations of sexual misconduct? True, he cherished his relationship with his wife and obviously did not want to hurt her. (In a note to the president of his production company, he described her as "Japan's number one wife, mother and actress.") But his movies showed him to be an astute and detached observer of the human condition -- frailties and all.

Itami (real name Ikeuchi Yoshihiro) was regarded as one of the most powerful Japanese directors of his generation. In all, he made 10 films after turning to movie-making in 1984, at the age of 50. Before that he had been a commercial designer, an essayist, a magazine editor and a television reporter. He also acted in a number of films and TV dramas, and had parts in 55 Days in Peking (1963) and Lord Jim (1965).

From his first film (The Funeral) to his last (Marutai no Onna, released four months ago), he poked sticks at Japan's sacred cows. Itami was revered for the way he spoke the unspeakable, ridiculing the way the country buries its dead, collects its taxes, treats its sick and strives for the perfect noodle. But it was all done deftly, in a lighthearted and strictly comedic fashion that provoked both laughter and introspection.

Not everyone got the joke. In 1992, three gangsters attacked the director in the street shortly after the release of The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion. They slashed his face, leaving him with jagged scars that friends say he wore as a badge of honor. It seems the gangster community had taken offense at being portrayed not as the samurai warriors they think they are, but as bunglers and losers.

In death, Itami was as mocking of convention as he had been in life. He was cremated Dec. 22 with just 15 friends and relatives present. On his orders, there was no funeral service and none of the flowers and cash gifts that are part of tradition at Japanese funerals.