MARUSA NO ONNA
[A TAXING WOMAN]
A Film Review by Manavendra K. Thakur
Copyright 1988 by Manavendra K. Thakur and The Tech
Reproduced with permission.
1987 127 mins. Japan Japanese with English Subtitles Unrated Dolby Stereo Color 35mm/1.33
Cast: Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Masahiko Tsugawa, Hideo Murota, Shuji Otaki, Daisuke Yamashita, Shinsuke Ashida, Keiju Kobayashi, Mariko Okada, Kiriko Shimizu, Kazuyo Matsui, Yasuo Daichi, Kinzo Sakura, Hajime Asoh, Shiro Ito, Eitaro Ozawa.
Credits: Written and Directed by Juzo Itami. Produced by Yasushi Tamaoki and Seigo Hosogoe. Director of Photography: Yonezo Maeda. Edited by Akira Suzuki. Music by Toshiyuki Honda. Art Direction by Shuji Nakamura. Lighting by Akio Katsura. Recording by Osamu Onodera.
Studio: Itami Productions, Inc. / New Century Producers
Distributor (North America): Original Cinema, Inc.
853 Broadway Suite #1711
New York, NY 10003
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The rise of Juzo Itami has been nothing less than meteoric. In four short years and three films, he has become perhaps the best known Japanese film director in the West since Akira Kurosawa. After taking a close look at death in OSOSHIKI [THE FUNERAL] (1984) and at sex and food in TAMPOPO (1986), he strikes again with MARUSA NO ONNA, a film that mirrors and satirizes another universal theme: taxes. But the Japanese version of taxation is far removed from what most Americans think of as taxes. In Japan, as an opening title points out, tax rates can be as high as 80%, and consequently people of all economic backgrounds cheat on their taxes as a matter of routine. And the lengths to which the national tax police, Marusa, goes to enforce the tax laws make IRS tactics seem like peaches and cream in comparison.
Itami says he "became interested in taxes after almost all the earnings from OSOSHIKI had been snatched away as income tax." Accordingly, he decided to make a film about how Marusa operates and decided to use the stars of his first two films in his latest film. Nobuko Miyamoto plays the lead role of Ryoko Itakura, a freckled and ambitious tax inspector who singlemindedly works her way up from mom and pop grocers to the big-time real estate tycoons and "love hotel" (adult hotels) owners. She tries early on to audit one such big fish, Hideki Gondo (Tsutomu Yamazaki), whose skill at hiding his income is more than a match for her limited authority as an auditor. So the film skips forward about six months or so when Ryoko is promoted to a full-fledged tax inspector. And that's when the real fun begins.
The comedic moments stem mostly from the extraordinary measures that citizens use to cheat on their taxes. To the Japanese shown in the film, nothing is sacred in the pursuit of another yen. They make false loans to friends, bribe politicians, and even bury cash in jars containing ashes of the dead. One woman tries to swallow an incriminating document as the tax collectors close in. (They have to hold her nose shut in order to force her mouth open.) It's all a huge game, and everyone takes part, from the servants to the wives and mistresses. As one video arcade owner comments after his tears win him a slight reprieve from Ryoko, "I'd cry all day to save a million."
What's also remarkable is the equally relentless drive of the tax agents to ferret out the hidden incomes and exaggerated expenses. The tax inspectors are legally sanctioned Mission Impossible types who employ extensive command centers to coordinate raids, stay on duty for three or four days at a stretch, and use all sorts of high-tech surveillance techniques to glean their targets' real income. Typical of their thoroughness is a scene in which an agent sticks his foot in the doorway to keep Gondo's mistress from slamming shut the door. After she starts beating on his shoe with a heavy object, he casually says, "Ma'am, they're safety shoes, used in a factory. Even a truck couldn't crush them!"
But on a more serious level, nothing seems to be sacred to these inspectors. On one of Ryoko's first assignments as inspector, the agents strongly suspect a woman of having hidden a safe-deposit box key within her bra. They ask Ryoko to search her, but the woman takes off her clothes, leans backwards, and cries "Women have another hiding place. Don't you want to search it too?" Of course, the woman is overacting to play on the agents' sympathies, but the point is that if Ryoko hadn't just then found the key under the kitchen sink, the agents probably would have indeed searched her body thoroughly. Itami's satire is rooted in showing how easily both officials and citizens tacitly agree to transgress social and privacy limits for the sake of money.
Because everyone is probably guilty, most investigations in the film turn out similarly. It's not until the very last scene -- appropriately filmed at the top of an empty stadium overlooking the city -- that Ryoko and Gondo step back to take the longer view of the tax rat-race. Itami ends the scene and the film with a modern-day variant of the classic tradition of hara-kiri, making it especially poignant and appropriate to the Japan of today.
Itami's cinematic realization of his script is most noteworthy for the excellent acting by both Miyamoto (Itami's wife in real life) and Yamazaki. Their performances are much more Western than in either of Itami's previous films. In fact, Miyamoto told The New York Times that because "The few women inspectors in Japan do not behave like [Ryoko] ... I had to look to Americans," and specifically Peter Falk's Columbo, for inspiration. The stars' acting makes up for the annoyingly inconsistent shot composition by Itami and cinematographer Yonezo Maeda, who either have forgotten how to look through the camera's viewfinder or just can't make up their minds whether to shoot in 1.33 or 1.66 aspect ratio. Other technical production values are better to good, but none particularly stand out, even upon a second viewing.
Ultimately, Itami's film most resembles American films like BROADCAST NEWS. Both have round and interesting characters, both are roughly equal in entertainment value, both explore themes (taxes, television news) that resonate deeply with their respective societies, and both are more witty than full of belly-laughs. (MARUSA NO ONNA, however, was far more successful in its native country. It swept the Japanese Academy Awards and became the fourth highest grossing film in Japan in 1987.) MARUSA NO ONNA isn't a great film, from either the standpoint of comedy or cinematic accomplishment. It doesn't, for example, equal Itami's success with OSOSHIKI, which remains his best work to date. But Itami's latest offering does confirm his reign among Japanese filmmakers known in the West as the director most in tune with contemporary social realities. His willingness to explore and criticize those realities is at the heart of his film's success.
Directorial filmography of Juzo Itami:
OSOSHIKI [THE FUNERAL] 1984 124 mins. TAMPOPO 1986 114 mins. MARUSA NO ONNA [A TAXING WOMAN] 1987 127 mins. MARUSA NO ONNA II [A TAXING WOMAN II] 1988 127 mins.
Juzo Itami, 56 years old, is the son of Mansaku Itami, an early Japanese film director. Initially a commercial artist, Juzo Itami became an actor and appeared in films directed by Nicolas Ray, Richard Brooks, Kon Ichikawa, and Yoshimitsu Morita, and others. Itami decided to become a director at age 50 because he became too "impatient" waiting for good acting roles.
Manavendra K. Thakur
thakur@eddie.mit.edu
thakur@cfa200.harvard.edu
{harvard,decvax!genrad,uunet}!mit-eddie!thakur
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