Dec 20, 2018
On 20 December 1997, 64-year-old director Juzo Itami jumped from the roof of his office building after press published evidence that he was having an extramarital affair. His suicide letter denied the affair and explained that he had no choice but to kill himself.
Juzo Itami’s death was investigated, since he had been stabbed in 1992 by 3 members of the yakuza, shortly after his film Minbo was released, which depicted the gangsters as weak fools. In 2008, a former yakuza member claimed that they had forced Itami to jump from the building, but this claim has never been verified.
