Many Happy Returns for ‘A Taxing Woman’s’ Itami : Writer-Director’s Award-Winning Hit Looks at a Japan He Sees Consumed by Materialism

At first glance, Japanese writer-director Juzo Itami looks more like an actor than an observer. Dressed all in black in an expensive, pale hotel room, his face serene and smiling, he seems to have brought Japan with him into Bel-Air. His style is perfect, all of a piece--like a samurai, a cat, or a haiku.

But Itami is more truly a witness, as we should know from his films. Sardonic, scathing, intelligent, sexy--they all penetrate some vital aspect of modern Japanese life. “The Funeral” looks at tradition and the rites of death. “Tampopo” examines the obsessions with food and commerce. And the new “A Taxing Woman” vivisects the economy: how it works, who pays, who doesn’t pay--and what happens when the Japanese IRS finds out.

Itami’s is a funny but unsettling vision of contemporary Japan--which he sees as consumed with materialism. But how prevalent, in real life, is this attitude?

“It is so predominant in the society right now,” Itami says, through a translator, “that it’s very difficult for a person to be aware of what is actually taking place. Prior to this, religious attitudes dominated the people. Now, it’s materialistic.

“Right now, in Japan everything is pretty much controlled: what you should wear, how you should act, how you should feel. It’s a controlled society: controlled by companies, television, advertisement . . . the average person might think he or she is acting independently. But in reality, are you doing and buying what you really want? Or are you manipulated, deceived into believing it’s your true desire?

“I hate it. There’s really no solution to the problem. For a film maker like me, it’s important to actually stand back, look at your culture and observe it and then to create something fresh. Then the audience might look at the film and see a reflected image of themselves. . . . When they realize it, they might find another way. Up to then, they’re wandering around in circles.”

“Tampopo” was his most popular film with American audiences--but the reverse is true in Japan, where “The Funeral” and “A Taxing Woman” were both huge box-office hits and swept the major 1985 and 1987 Japanese equivalent of the Academy Awards: four for “The Funeral” and eight for “A Taxing Woman.” (“A Taxing Woman II” is already in release in Japan.)

Of “The Funeral” he says: “I experienced it. The (deceased) man is the father of my wife.” (That wife, actress Nobuko Miyamoto, plays her counterpart in the film.) “So I managed the funeral myself. What happened in real life was just like what happened in the movie.”

And of “Taxing Woman”: “I put the different events and the main characters into a fictitious whole. But in reality, everything that happened is actually based on fact.”

“A Taxing Woman” begins by showing us a smiling, swaggering tax cheat--played by Tsutomo Yamazaki, also Itami’s alter ego in “The Funeral”--whose callous finagling disgusts us. Then, surprisingly, it creates a balance of sympathies by detailing the outrageous overkill of the tax investigators’ methods--spearheaded by a pretty young investigator (Miyamoto again), who strikes off sexual sparks from her prey.

Melodrama? Exaggeration?

Itami shakes his head, with a quiet laugh: “It’s an understatement. I made research. I made lots of interviews with the investigators . . . I have not really shown the worst part of it; I’ve not exposed the worst.”

The idea for “A Taxing Woman” germinated in the aftermath of “The Funeral.”

“Everything that I’ve done has been self-financed. So all the income, because I’m a company, was taxed at 65%. (For individuals, the graduated tax goes up to 93%.) However, as you know, there’s an estimated tax for the following year, so we had to submit payment of this, too. . . . In the end, it turned out to be about 97.3% of the movie’s income. As soon as it came in, it went right out the door.”

Itami achieved this overtaxing success rather late in life. Although he is the son of Mansaku Itami, a famous early Japanese film maker, he became a director himself at 52. And this was after a long, successful multiple career as writer, actor and talk-show host. (He describes his show “Listen, Women!” as “a sort of Japanese ‘Good Morning America.’ ”)

It was as an actor that he attained his greatest fame. He worked for American directors like Nick Ray and Richard Brooks in his youth, and eventually won two Japanese supporting actor “Academy Awards”: as the harassed father in Morita’s “The Family Game” and the practical elder brother-in-law in Ichikawa’s “The Makioka Sisters.” He played the condemned colonel in Shinoda’s “MacArthur’s Children.”

His wife, Nobuko--whom he met when they acted in a TV series together--has matched him by now, winning two best-actress awards under his direction. “She is an extremely talented actress,” he boasts, sunnily. “It’s really a pleasure for me to give her the opportunity to expand her range, show what she can do.”

Itami’s primary cinematic influences are the French New Wave and semiotics. But the directors he cites as favorites and models are a mixture of Japanese (“Mr. Mizoguchi, Mr. Ozu, Mr. Naruse”) and American (“Mr. Ford, Mr. Hitchcock and Mr. Welles”). Mention of the interrelationship of Japanese and American culture since World War II brings on a complex explanation: He shrugs off the translator, and lays a spoon across two glasses. It becomes, in his spun-out metaphor, the “bridge.”

“The relationship between two people in Japan is like the mother and the baby. Nurturing. In the Western culture--in the United States--two people don’t need that kind of relationship. In America, you need something for two people to come together: a bridge.” The spoon clinks on the glass.

“So if an American were to approach a Japanese person, they would go toward the Japanese with the bridge, to meet them. However, a Japanese does not need a bridge. They can be approached directly, without it.”

He pauses, muses. His view of Japan is tender and dark. He regards the movies as poor (“Right now, most of the pictures coming out are so mediocre that if you come up with a pretty good picture, it’s very marketable”); the culture as mercenary and Tokyo itself as “the most ugly city in the world.” (He prefers Kyoto.) What, given his pessimistic view of today’s Japan, does he think of the United States?

“Many years ago, when I first came to the Unites States, I was walking along the streets, and I thought to myself: ‘My God, there are so many tourists here!’ And then it dawned on me: No, they were not tourists. They are Americans. And America means many groups and races: That is the United States.

“And then I thought: What is it in America here that draws all these many nationalities to the United States? I thought: Of course, it represents freedom, democracy . . . all that. So maybe it means that the whole country is covered with a fictitious image--and, under that image, people are drawn to it.”

Itami’s eyes retain their dark, piercing gaze as the sun begins to set. “Japan is still very influenced by America today. But in a sense, they are in a different battle. An economic one. And whereas Japan lost the war--now, this battle is an economic battle. And they’re winning. That probably gratifies them highly.”