Marusa na onna II (The taxing woman's return)

My goal in filmmaking is to shed an objective light on certain aspects of Japanese culture. In 'A Taxing Woman's Return', I examine the Japanese people's relationship to money. Japan's defeat in World War Two brought about a sudden collapse of traditional values which were replaced by the worship of money, productivity, economics, competition and so forth. In Japan today, money is a "god" pulling all the new values together. 'A Taxing Woman's Return' mirrors the country in that situation. Humour and satire are important in my films. Laughter at authority, the establishment and power is satire, while laughter about human weaknesses and the emptiness of life is humour. In either case, when a new light illuminates the mundane, an odd feeling of 'divergence' occurs, which in turn creates laughter. I owe much of my cultivated sense of this 'divergence' to the several years I lived in Britain. (Juzo Itami)