Juzo Itami is perhaps the best-known contemporary Japanese director on this side of the pond. His bawdy “Japanese Noodle Western,” Tampopo (1986), a commercial and critical hit, was immediately followed by A Taxing Woman (l987) and A Taxing Woman’s Return (l988), both of which dealt with a polite, endearing, and maddeningly persistent tax investigator who roots out corruption and mob collusion in high places. Like these earlier works, Itami’s latest offering, Supermarket Woman, is a high-octane, speedball comedy brimming with social satire. And its feet are firmly planted on the ground of everyday Japanese life.
Hanako is a recently widowed homemaker who loves a well-run supermarket. She delights in a crisply displayed array of produce, a neatly packaged cut of meat, a glistening exhibition of freshly caught fish. When the glitzy Bargains Galore superstore opens, she joyfully runs down to check out the deals. There she meets Goro, of the moribund Honest Goro’s supermarket, a down-at-the-heels establishment poised on the brink of ruin. Having sneaked over to check out the competition, Goro is stunned into defeatist despair. But Hanako points out some shady practices–meat doctoring, bait-and-switch scams, and unbelievable bargains for “the first thousand customers” that run out minutes after the initial half-dozen shoppers storm the aisles. “You can beat them,” she exhorts Goro, “by providing great products at good prices. Supermarket success is not about gimmicks and glamour, but good old-fashioned bargains.” Goro rallies, and the pair set off to make Honest Goro’s the best supermarket in all Japan.
What follows is a hilariously entertaining comedy. Nobuko Myamoto, who gained fame as the Taxing Woman of Itami’s earlier films, is a screen tsunami as the shopping expert, Hanako. At the Seattle International Film Festival, where Supermarket Woman had its North American premiere, the audiences were howling with glee at her antics. Only a Japanese woman could be so exquisitely polite, so patiently deferential, even as she cuts through all obstacles, a juggernaut of pure, moral energy. She is right and she knows it. By the end of the film, so will everyone else. Or else.
Hired on as a combination cheerleader, quality consultant, and motivational executive, Hanako proceeds to rally support for a new and improved Honest Goro’s. If the store fails, it will be bought out by the shady Yakuza types who run Bargains Galore. With the competition vanquished, they will be free to charge larcenous prices for wilted vegetables and soggy meat. But to accomplish her counterattack, Hanako must wade through the cronyism of Honest Goro’s department heads, each of whom commands loyalty from his underlings in a semiautonomous fiefdom. She must also root out petty corruption, spying, and betrayal.
The genius of Supermarket Woman is that, while on one level it’s simply a madcap comedy about a food store, on a deeper level it’s a razor-sharp satire about Japanese society. The boom of the last three decades has stabilized. Japanese banks, once seemingly unstoppable, are now overextended with bad real-estate loans. The ruling political party has suffered a string of humiliating scandals, and the other Tigers of Asia are biting off chunks of Japan’s market share in the industries that fueled its postwar economic miracle. China’s economy will soon dwarf Japan’s. A disquieting ennui has settled on Japan, and many Japanese are asking tough questions.
Supermarket Woman readily crosses cultural boundaries, but viewers will require a few cultural cues if they want to crack the deeper satirical levels. To get something of the bang that a Japanese audience gets you have to know a few essentials about Japanese life.
Freshness is an obsession to the Japanese, especially in seafood. The final plot twist turns on this and could be easily underappreciated. New Year’s Day is one of the biggest holidays in Japan. Extended families get together for a feast of sushi, sashimi, and other delicacies–all of which must be as fresh as is humanly possible. The supermarket trade is dependent on its ability to provide the freshest seafood and produce right up to the big day.
Consensus is essential to Japanese deal making. While North Americans like to hammer out a deal in undisguised combat, the Japanese prefer to reach a consensus where everyone saves face. Deal making is just as ruthless as it is here, however; it’s conducted in a passive-aggressive style that stymies many Western businessmen and diplomats. Witness American attempts to negotiate the opening of Japanese markets. Nuance is everything.
Efficiency is not always what it seems. The Japanese are in many areas–notably assembly-line work–the most efficient people in the world. But there are some arenas in which tradition and aesthetics reign supreme. Food preparation is one of these areas. Who else would build restaurants dedicated to blowfish sashimi, a fantastically expensive delicacy, arrayed on the plate in exquisitely cut patterns–when a slight mistake in removing the entrails will poison and kill the hapless gourmet? This happens many times a year. Japanese moms expend enormous amounts of time creating perfect school lunches, replete with little Jell-O animals and gaily patterned rice balls. For years rice was coated with talcum powder to give it an attractive sheen in the market, until the talc was finally linked to a high incidence of stomach cancer. In Tampopo, eating a simple bowl of udon noodles becomes an ecstatic, multisensory experience. Since seeing that film, I have never approached udon without a sense of awe.
While Japan is rightfully lauded for its low rate of personal crimes–like burglary, assault, and murder–it is, like many Asian nations, steeped in a tradition of bribery, petty corruption, and cronyism that is difficult to root out. In the U.S. Navy, the term comshaw is a bastardization of a word that essentially means to take military equipment and trade it for favors. Sailors don’t “steal” flight jackets, tools, or food–they comshaw them. There is a lot of comshaw going down in Honest Goro’s.
In a recent interview, Itami–whose face was slashed by Japanese mobsters shortly after the release of his 1992 film Minbo–Or, The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion–spoke provocatively about this pervasive corruption: “Japanese people lack principles. Western society is based on the Christian identity. There is a set of rules to protect. But in Japan, everything is based on relationships, and relationships change.”1 At a time when many Americans are inclined to give up an ethics based on “rules” for an ethics based on “relationships,” Itami’s comments are not without interest.
For a Christian audience, Supermarket Woman raises some interesting ethical questions. What would a Christian supermarket look like, and how would it be different from any other? Certainly the meat would not be repackaged, redated, and sold as fresh. The employees would not be comshawing meat and fish to pad their paychecks; that’s obvious. But what about the hyperbolic ads and other practices taken for granted in the world of American business? And, more difficult still, what about the system in which the supermarket industry is embedded? To what extent, for instance, would the workers at a Christian market be involved in the decision-making processes that shape their lives?
Supermarket Woman explores these issues from a Japanese perspective, offering an accessible glimpse into an ancient society facing the latest in a long series of painful adjustments to the realities of a changing world. “East is East,” Kipling pontificated, “and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet.” Juzo Itami, for those who care to take note, proves him wrong.
1. Michael A. Lev, “In a Culture That Values Conformity, Two Japanese Social Critics Speak Up,” Chicago Tribune, June 12, 1997.
Copyright(c) 1997 by the author or Christianity Today, Inc./Books & Culture Magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail BCedit@aol.com.
Sep/Oct 1997, Vol. 3, No. 5, Page 10
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