Juzo Itami Knew What Was Missing, Part 2

Film director and actor Juzo Itami once said that modern Japan was a country that “failed to invent the father.” In the West, he said, the roles of mother, father and infant were fully developed, but in Japan, only the mother and infant had emerged. The mother-infant relationship is ruled by the pleasure principle, he argued, and the father’s role is to break that relationship and infuse the family with logic and rational thought. Because the role of the father had been retarded in Japan, the director said, Japan had only two cultural ideals: the motherly, nurturing type and the cute, obedient type.

In just about any Itami movie, men suckle on women’s breasts. Sometimes it’s the most corrupt or disturbed characters who suckle: the cult killer in Marutai no Onna (Woman of the Police Protection Program); the corporate tax dodger in A Taxing Woman. But perhaps the most famous breast-feeding scene is the closing shot of the hit Tampopo, which perfectly ties together the movie’s themes of eroticism and food.

Tampopo was described as a “Japanese noodle western” when it came out in 1986. It became a cult hit on college campuses in the US, and it seemed that Itami’s career was about to skyrocket. The film hinges on a fairly flimsy plot where a widow (played by Itami’s wife, Nobuko Miyamoto) tries to save her ramen noodle restaurant despite being a pretty mediocre cook. A mysterious truck-driving stranger wearing a cowboy hat (Tsutomu Yamazaki) appears and agrees to find a team of experts to help her learn how to make the perfect bowl of noodles.

Itami loosely weaves vignettes exploring food and eroticism in and around the main plot. The sex scenes are both funny and erotic, and some of the vignettes are knee-slappers, such as the scene where the old, sickly man is left to have lunch and promptly orders and devours the very dishes he is supposed to avoid, or the scene where an etiquette teacher tries to show young Japanese women how to properly use a knife and fork, only to be drowned out by a large Caucasian man on the other side of the restaurant slurping down his spaghetti with abandon.

Many movie fans expected more of the same from Itami, but his next eight films were more piercing in their social satire, more directed at affecting change, more Oliver Stone than Pedro Almodovar. Itami was obsessed with Japan’s culture of corruption, and then later, I would argue, with Hollywood.

His most direct spoof of political corruption, the 1990 Ageman (Tales of a Golden Geisha), is largely unknown overseas. Here he is spoofing actual politicians as well as Japan’s corrupt political culture. The actor with the thick glasses is the spitting image of Shintaro Abe, father of failed former prime minister Shinzo Abe; the one with the greased back hair and an eye for the ladies bears an uncanny resemblance to Ryutaro Hashimoto, who was prime minister when the movie came out; and the older man with the white hair and the closet full of cash will remind viewers of Shin Kanemaru, the kingmaker who was arrested at home with hundreds of pounds of gold bars stashed in his kitchen.

By 1990, Itami was the father of modern Japanese movies, leading the way for hits like Shall We Dance?. The responsibility seemed to weigh on him. He once said that his competition wasn’t with other Japanese directors but with Hollywood, because Hollywood made the movies the Japanese paid to see. Itami’s last work, Marutai no Onna, is his most violent, with car chases, fist fights and several murders. The tender touch of Tampopo is long gone by this point. Even Supaa no Onna (The Supermarket Woman), an entertaining movie about rival supermarket chains, contains a long car chase that seems stuffed into the script to placate those who need action and explosions in their movies.

Perhaps Itami was making concessions in hopes of drawing larger audiences. But his strength was not portraying violence or using special effects. He was best when he drew on his humor and compassion. Some of his most interesting scenes involve supposed enemies being drawn together, as in the gangster leader’s grudging respect for the female anti-extortion expert, or the tax woman and the tax dodger lying in an embrace after an assassination attempt.

Itami’s legacy may be largely overlooked, but his films still have a lot to teach us about what makes Japan tick.

Juzo Itami: Filmography
Ososhiki (The Funeral) (1985)
Tampopo (1986)
Marusa no Onna (A Taxing Woman) (1987)
Marusa no Onna II (A Taxing Woman’s Return) (1988)
A-ge-man (Tales of a Golden Geisha) (1990)
Minbo no Onna (Minbo - or the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion) (1992)
Daibyonin (The Last Dance) (1993)
Shizuka na Seikatsu (A Quiet Life) (1995)
Supaa no Onna (Supermarket Woman) (1996)
Marutai no Onna (Woman of the Police Protection Program) (1997)