Juzo Itami
Japanese actor, film director (1933–1997)
Juzo Itami (伊丹 十三, Itami Jūzō), born Yoshihiro Ikeuchi (池内 義弘, Ikeuchi Yoshihiro; May 15, 1933 – December 20, 1997), was a Japanese actor, screenwriter and film director. He directed eleven films (one short and ten features), all of which he wrote himself.
He is the namesake of the Juzo Itami Award, founded in 2009 to honor his legacy.
Early life
Itami was born Yoshihiro Ikeuchi in Kyoto. The name Itami was passed on from his father, Mansaku Itami, a renowned satirist and film director before World War II. In his childhood, he went by the name Takehiko Ikeuchi (池内 岳彦).
At the end of the war, in Kyoto, Itami was chosen as a prodigy and educated in a Tokubetsu Kagaku Gakkyū ("special scientific education class"), where he began to be trained as a future scientist who was expected to defeat the Allied powers. Among his fellow students were the sons of Hideki Yukawa and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. The program was abolished in March 1947.
He moved from Kyoto to Ehime Prefecture when he was a high school student. He attended the prestigious Matsuyama Higashi High School, where he was known for being able to read works by Arthur Rimbaud in French.
The public source identifies “Juzo Itami” as japanese actor, film director (1933–1997). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Juzo, Itami and Japanese.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1325171. VIAF identifies the subject as 14969724. The Library of Congress control number is n84083848. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1997, 2009 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Juzo Itami” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.