He attended the prestigious Matsuyama Higashi High School, where he was known for being able to read works by Arthur Rimbaud in French.

Due to his poor academic record, he had to remain in the same class for two years; it was here that he became acquainted with Kenzaburō Ōe, who later married his sister.

[citation needed] After failing the entrance exam for the College of Engineering at Osaka University, Itami worked at times as a commercial designer and writer, illustrator, television reporter, and essayist.

In January 1960 he joined Daiei Film and was given the stage name Itami Ichizō (伊丹 一三) by Masaichi Nagata.

In 1965 he published a book of essays which became a hit, Yoroppa Taikutsu Nikki ("Diary of Boredom in Europe").

In 1967, when working with director Nagisa Ōshima on the set of Sing a Song of Sex (Nihon Shunka Kō) he met Nobuko Miyamoto.

It won six major Japanese Academy awards and spawned a sequel A Taxing Woman's Return in 1988.

The central character, played by his wife Nobuko Miyamoto who appeared in all his films, became a pop culture heroine.

Itami directed the anti-yakuza satire Minbo: the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion as his sixth feature.

[15] His subsequent stay in a hospital inspired his next film Daibyonin (1993), a grim satire on the Japanese health system.

On his desk was found a suicide note written on a word processor[19] stating that he had been falsely accused of an affair and was taking his life to clear his name.

In 2008, a former member of the Goto-gumi yakuza group told reporter Jake Adelstein: "We set it up to stage his murder as a suicide.

"[21][22] The attack is thought to have been due to the topic of Itami's next film, which was rumored to have been focusing on connections between the Goto-gumi and the cult-like Soka Gakkai religious group.