Interview (Written): Jûzô Itami

I watched the wonderful 1985 ‘noodle Western’ Tampopo last night, then searched the Internet until I discovered this 1990 interview with the film’s writer-director Jûzô Itami. He was a fascinating filmmaker, primarily an actor until he turned 50, then began writing and directing his movies. His writing-directing credits include The Funeral (1984), A Taxing Woman (1987), and Minbô no onna (1992), but he is probably best known for Tampopo. Here is the movie’s trailer:

Here are some excerpts from the 1990 interview featured in the Kyoto Journal:

Your first two films have had some foreign distribution. When you were making them, did you have international audiences in mind?

Not really. I did “The Funeral” in Japanese for a Japanese audience. Later it went abroad, and some audiences could enjoy it because funerals happen everywhere, even though the rituals are different in each culture. When I watched the film at Cannes, the audience laughed at all the same places as the Japanese audiences, except they laughed through the entire sex scene, while the Japanese didn’t laugh at all.

What about “Tanpopo?” in the U.S. it’s been doing unusually well for a foreign-language film, although it wasn’t very successful in Japan.

Yes, and it’s making the round now in England and France, too. The American critics love it. I hear it was included in the “Best 10” lists in many publications. Actually, I wasn’t that pleased with it. I liked the idea a lot. The script was good, but somehow it got bogged down in production. I was very dissatisfied with the camera work, in particular. I’d like to do it again, if possible.

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You’ve written several books of social commentary organized around the concept fo the family…

Japan is like one giant family. I’ve tended to view the society the way a psychoanalyst observes a family. The members of any family think their family’s conditions are normal. For example, if the husband beats his wife every day, or if the mother abuses her child, it may seem very strange to an outsider, but those inside the family think it’s natural. After all, that’s their reality. There’s no way for them to understand that their situation is abnormal, unless they can somehow step outside their household. This basic objectivity is what is missing in Japan. There is never an external view. Well, just recently perhaps Japan has stepped out of herself a bit, or at least that’s the way it looks from the inside…, but the real objectivity of viewing the inside form the outside isn’t there. In general, Japanese can’t understand themselves without experience the culture shock of leaving the country.

If you’re making a film, for example, you need to understand Japan, or people in general, form the inside as well as the outside. But it shouldn’t just be buried away in the film. The film is your tool , and while making the film, you should also be outside, but setting up some logical framework for viewing it, some theories. Japan needs to establish a standpoint and a language for viewing and reassessing its culture from the outside.

Here is a Japanese language documentary on Itami, the only one I could find online. If someone knows of a doc or video interview in English, please email me.

Sadly Itami is believed to have committed suicide in 1997, a real loss.

For the rest of the interview, go here.