Juzo Itami, born Yoshihiro Ikeuchi, was a Japanese actor, screenwriter and film director. He directed eleven films, all of which he wrote himself. The son of Mansaku Itami, prewar director of satiric jidai-geki, Jūzō worked initially as an actor, appearing regularly in Japan and occasionally in English-language productions such as Lord Jim (1965, Richard Brooks). After a major success playing the father in Yoshimitsu Morita’s Family Game (Kazoku gēmu, 1983), he privately financed his first and best film as director, The Funeral (Osōshiki, 1984), a pointed black comedy following a family preparing for their father’s cremation. Though there were occasional sight gags, the main source of the comedy was incongruity: the awkwardness of people unfamiliar with established rituals, or the tactlessness of the crematorium assistant explaining the grisly details of the process to the bereaved relatives. Itami followed this film with an international hit, Tampopo (Tanpopo, 1985), in which the proprietor of a small restaurant learns to make the perfect bowl of ramen noodles, this saga unfolding alongside various sketches on the theme of food. Blending pastiche of the American Western with seasonings of pseudo-Oriental mysticism, this was actually more farce than satire, and one of Itami’s less typical films; his most lightweight work, it was, nevertheless, his funniest. Itami’s most characteristic vein, however, was one of hectic social satire, typified by the two Taxing Woman films (Marusa no onna, 1987, and Marusa no onna 2, 1988), about a government agent pursuing tax evaders, by A Woman against Extortion (Minbō no onna, 1992), about a lawyer fighting yakuza intimidation in a luxury hotel, and by Ageman (1990), about a former geisha who brings luck to every man who beds her. All were distinguished by feisty performances from Itami’s wife and regular star, Nobuko Miyamoto. The least successful, Ageman, was an uncomfortably broad critique of po Watch drama online for free.