The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion

An upscale Japanese hotel hires Mahiru (Nobuko Miyamoto), a lawyer adept at dealing with the yakuza, to help them rid their hotel of the local gangsters so they can get a contract for a meeting of important foreign officials. With this raucous farce—an enormous box-office hit in Japan—director Juzo Itami dared to satirize the yakuza and paid dearly for it; shortly after the film’s release, his face was slashed in an attack by vengeful mobsters, and his mysterious death, five years later, was alleged to have been further payback.

Starring Nobuko Miyamoto, Yasuo Daichi, Takehiro Murata