If you haven't seen it, Tampopo is a lovely "ramen western" film that stars none other than a very young Ken Watanabe! After watching it I looked up the film and found something interesting.
The director, Juzo Itami, once made an anti-yakuza movie that led to him being attacked by a couple members of the Goto-gumi yakuza group.
Itami died in 1997 after falling off the roof of his office. On his desk was a suicide note stating that he had been falsely accused of an affair and was taking his life to clear his name.
A decade later, a member of the Goto-gomi told a reporter that it was staged to look like a suicide and that they pointed a gun at his head and told him to jump or else they'd shoot him, because of a rumor that his next film was going to be about the Goto-gomi specifically.
The name of that reporter?
Jake Adelstein.
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This is a rabbit hole I need to go down. Thanks for sharing.
https://www.filmedinether.com/features/juzo-itami-vs-the-yakuza/
Juzo Itami was a popular and very talented film director, whose comedic films offended the yakuza, so they murdered him. His wife, Nobuko Miyamoto, was the star of his films. She can currently be seen in House of Ninjas on Netflix, playing the grandmother. There is a museum, the ITAMI JUZO MUSEUM, dedicated to his work. Itami was a daring and unrepentant film maker.
your first watch of Tampopo will have you simultaneously captivated and being like wtf? lol
I love going on tangents and finding out crazy things like this, thanks for sharing!
Wow. A Taxing Woman is pretty good too.
Awesome thank you!
Yep, Minbo was one of his best, along with Tampopo and A Taxing Woman 1 and 2.
Highly recommend you read his follow up book, The Last Yakuza. He covers that incident in the book.