Minbo Woman – Or the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion

After Death Japanese Style, Tampopo and A Taxing Woman had taken a freewheeling satiric approach to such established Japanese institutions as the family funeral, the quest for the perfect bowl of noodles, and the national tax agency, the internationally successful director Juzo Itami turned his attention to the country's yakuza in this courageous comic exposé. The film-maker's spouse Nobuko Miyamoto again features as a female lawyer who teams up with an anti-extortion expert to expel the gangster's influence from a luxury hotel business they threaten to overwhelm. Itami treats it all like the familiar genre story of the samurai coming to rescue the put-upon villagers, but his bravery was not without a price, for real-life yakuza stabbed the director near his home shortly after the film's release.