Director Juzi Itami and actress Nobuko Miyamoto were husband & wife team who made several of the most successful yet also most artsy Japanese films in the 1980s-1990s, including The Funeral, Tampopo, A Taxing Woman, and A Taxing Woman Returns. Yakuza played a role in Japanese media much like black gangbangers did in America at the same time. They were lauded as romantic freedom fighters who dared to challenge an oppressive society, but at the same time in real life nobody would go near them except to buy drugs. Itami has a very different take, showing us that they're not just worthless parasites, they're also cowards who can be defeated if you know how to fight back.
You do not want to frick with Ms. Inouye.
Gangsters are shaking down a hotel, coming up with one plot after enough to defraud and extort them. The beginning of the movie shows us everything not to do, like show fear or hope that if you just act like they're normal people maybe everything will be okay this time. One dynamic they get down perfectly is where a criminal causes problems, and everyone bitches and complains and swears they're going to do something about it. But if anybody actually does confront them, they get blamed like they're the one who one who caused the trouble. Eventually they hire a lawyer who is an expert on extortion and she teaches them how to not be limp-peepeeed losers. There's a lot of really good advice in here that applies to all kinds of situations in any country where somebody is trying to illegally intimidate you into giving up what's yours.
Don't back down when the reddit jannies get aggressive like this.
The movie certainly touched a nerve. 
A week after it premiered, members of the Goto-gumi slashed him deep across his face. Five years later he committed suicide by jumping off a building 
and left a suicide note that basically said "This is totally suicide, for reasons that totally make sense. 
Nobody pushed me. Lol sorry, I can't keep a straight face. 
" So I don't think you can get much more street cred than that.
One possible motive is that he may have been working on a movie about connections between the Goto-gumi and the Sokka Gakkai cult, who I have my own beef with. Once a long time ago this attractive asian woman approaches me at the bus stop downtown and starts a conversation. She says something about how maybe I'm not in alignment with the universe and I laugh thinking "wow, she's pretty funny too". And then I realize she really meant it. She was just trying to recruit me. AWWWWWWWWWWWKWARD!!!
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i love this movie along with tanpopo. Juzo Itami was a national treasure
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In A Taxing Woman he even manages to turn searching a house for hidden cash into an action scene. He was one of a kind.
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