Itami Juzo
Referentiality and Selfreferenciality
Itami’s Career
• Itami Juzo was born in 1933
as a son of Mansaku Itamai,
who was a prominent film
director in the silent age.
• At high school he met Oe
Kenzaburo, who was to
marry Itami’s sister.
• Failing to enter University of
Osaka, he became a
commercial designer, TV
reporter, essayist and actor.
Itami’s Career
Itami became a dependable supporting actor. He
also went to the US to be trained as actor at
Hollywood.
• A crook student in A False Student (1960) by
Masumura Yasuzo, based on the novel of Oe.
• Son of a factory owner, friend of the protagonist
in Younger Brother (1960) by Ichikawa Kon
• Col. Chiba in 55 Days at Peking (1963) by
Nicholas Ray
• Warris in Lord Jim (1965) by Richard Brooks
Itami’s Career
• Meitei in I am a cat
(1975) by Ichikawa Kon
• Tatsuo, Tsuruko’s
husband in The Makioka
Sisters (1983) by
Ichikawa Kon
• In The Family Game
(1983), Itami
marvelously played the
role of the father who has
two teenage boys.
• He turned to a film
director after this film.
Filmmaking in the 80s
• ‘Collapse’ of studio system / star system in
the 1970s.
• The studios stopped contracting directors,
stars and staff. (1st wave of the collapse)
• The studios reduced their own production
(2nd wave of the collapse) and shifted their
funds to the part-financing of independent
film projects and projects of independent
production companies.
Filmmaking in the 80s
• The studios are owned by film companies, which
also own distributors and exhibitors (film
theatres). The film companies have come to
distribute works of independent filmmakers and
independent production companies, and open
their film theatres for those works.
• Virtually every film became an independent or a
part-independent film: every filmmaker became
an independent or a part-independent filmmaker
Filmmaking in the 80s
• In the era of the Japanese studio system, only
those who worked as assistant director could
become directors.
• With the collapse of the system, the studios
stopped having assistant directors under contract.
• People with various backgrounds and
experiences become film directors.
• Amateur filmmakers, film school graduates,
employees in the media, commercial makers,
video makers, actors, film critics, etc.
Student and amateur filmmaker
Morita Yoshimitsu (1950- )
Ishi’i Sogo (1957 - )
Omori Kazuki (1952 - )
Filmmaking in the 80s
• Tsukamoto Shinya (1960 - )
• Yamamoto Masashi (1960 - )
Filmmaking in the 80s
• TV Commercial director / video clip director
• Iwai Shunji (1963 - )
• Ichikawa Jun (1948 -2009 )
Filmmaking in the 80s
From television
• Kore’eda Kazuhiro (1962 - )
• Nakata Hideo (1961 - )
Filmmaking in the 80s
Director of video film (V-cinema)
• Mi’ike Takashi (1960 - )
• Kurosawa Kiyoshi (1955 - )
Filmmaking in the 80s
• Soft porn film
• Suo Masayuki (1956 - )
• Nakahara Shun (1951 - )
Actor / comedian: Hayashi Kaizo (1957 - )
Takenaka Naoto (1956 - )
Bando Tamasaburo (1950 - )
Kitano Takeshi (1947 - )
• The Funeral (1984) - an old Itami’s Films
man dies and his funeral is
prepared and carried out
following the conventions.
The film wryly observes
what ensues when the ageold ritual is repeated in
modern Japan and how
modern people react and
respond to death.
• Satire and
commedy of
manners a la Jean
Renoir
• In this family
occasion, some
secrets and lies are
revealed: extramarital affairs of the
dead man and his
son in low.
Itami’s Films
Itami’s Films
• Tampopo (1985) - a
track driver and his
assistant walk into a
ramen shop and is
appalled with the taste
of noodle. The driver
helps the owner of the
shop, the young widow
with a little son, create
a great noodle shop.
Itami’s Films
• Gourmet movies in the
mold of spaghetti
western.
• Drifter (driver - cowboy),
good citizen (the owner
of the shop - maiden in a
bar) - the undesirable
(the constructor outlaw)
• George Stevens, Shane
(1953)
Itami’s Films
• Taxing Woman (1987) - a
female tax inspector
investigate serious tax
evasions and frauds.
• Itami went on a through
research on these issues and
made a film on tax and tax
inspector (unglamorous
topics) borrowing the
framework of detective
thriller (glamorous genre).
• A Taxing Woman Returns
(1988) - the tax inspector Itami’s Films
returns to investigate this
time a huge tax evasion
by the leader of a
religious sect.
• Timely social issues of
the late 80s - corporate
greed, land shark, land
bubble, and the collapse
of communities are
shown in the mold of
detective thriller and
action film.
• A-Ge-Man (1990) Nayoko, a unhappy
geisha is an ageman,
who brings luck on
anybody who is
partnered with. She has
an affair with an
unfaithful company
executive. He is
protected by Nayoko’s
special power in
revealing dirty business
deals.
Itami’s Films
Itami’s Films
• Minbo: the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion (1992)
- a yakuza group makes a hotel a place for hangout
and a target of extortion. A female lawyer unite
hotel staff to face up the threats from yakuza thugs
and defeat them.
Itami’s Films
• Minbo made yakuza look greedy, extremely
vulgar, self-indulgent, foolish, dim-witted, and
dangerous to themselves and society.
• The angered yakuza (three) attacked Itami outside
his home and slashed his face.
• A social critique in the mold of yakuza film
Itami’s Films
• The Last Dance (1993) - a satire on the traditional
system and practice of the medicine in Japan,
particularly such as informed consent and sharing
information with patients.
Itami’s Films
• Supermarket Woman (1996) - the owner of a
supermarket, which suffers from price-cutting
competition from its rival, employ his former
classmate housewife for its survival.
• Revelation of the back-stage reality of the
retailing industry and satire on its business
practice.
• Woman of the Police
Protection Program
(1997) - an actress
witness a murder (a cult
group murders a lawyer)
and two cops go
everywhere with her to
protect her from the
group’s attempt to gag
her. In the end, she
gives her evidence at
court.
Itami’s Films
Itami as Auteur
• Contemporary social issues, behaviour and
manners in Japan: funeral, adultery, culinary
boom, economic babble, corporate greed, tax
evasion, organized crime (land shark, loan
shark, tax evasion, corporatization of yakuza),
welfare system, problems in the retail industry,
and the protection of witness.
• Cynical and satiric representation of the issues.
• Frank Capra like social awareness and
consciousness.
Itami as Auteur
• Dealing with social and moral issues, films are
by no means preachy
• Satiric stories are told borrowing the formulae
of entertainment film genres - Western,
suspense film, detective film, yakuza film, etc.
Itami as Auteur
Reference to films of other
filmmakers.
• Itami as a cine-phile
• Telling his own story in a
referential framework,
quoting and imitating
other films.
Itami as Auteur
• Itami ‘While continuing to watch films, I
accumulated in my mind a number of
impressive shots: a wonderful shot of a slope, a
wonderful shot of a rainy night, a wonderful
shot of people running together, a wonderful
shot of a finger touching something, a
wonderful shot of a thing moving in the air, a
wonderful shot of two people staring each other,
etc.’
• Interviewer: ‘Then, you had wanted to make
your own film full of such shots?’
• Itami: ‘Yes.’
Itami as Auteur
• Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932)
• Itami quotes the mise-en-scène of the vampire
coffin in his film Funeral
Itami as Auteur
• Ozu Yasujiro’s The End of Summer
• At the end of The End of Summer, smoke
comes out of a chimney as it does in The
Funeral.
Itami as Auteur
• George Stevens, Shane (1953)
• Tampopo borrows the narrative structure of
Shane. Goro walks into a run-down noodle
shop owned by a widow with a boy and helps
them out as Shane wanders into a farm
managed by a widow with a son.
Itami as Auteur
• Jean-Luc Godard, A bout de souffle (1959)
• The man in a white suit in Tampopo is modelled
after Michel Poicard in A bout de souffle and a
James Cagney character.http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ONQLXV1Do
Itami as Auteur
• Louis Buñuel’s film, The Discreet Charm of
Bourgeoisie
• The satire on the hypocritical discreetness of the
bourgeoisie is inserted in Tampopo referring to
the Buñuel’s film. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z50Gg_16H4
Itami as Auteur
• Chusingura
• Taxing Woman and Taxing Woman Returns base
their narrative structure on Chusingura. A
group of people bring justice to evil doers.
Itami’s Films
Self-referentiality of Itami’s films
• Refer to itself - refer to filmmaking - film is
about filmmaking
• Conscious foregrounding of various aspects
of filmmaking: what is filmmaking.
• E.g. The Funeral, the scene of the making
of TV advertisement; a video tape
explaining how to put up a funeral; amateur
video recording the preparation for funeral.