The darkest of Ichikawa's satires. In the deadpan way it delivers a steady stream of jokes about civic corruption, prostitution, tax evasion, the atomic bomb, and mass suicide, A Billionaire is unadulterated audacity. ("The final image," writes Tom Milne, "is as apocalyptic as anything the cinema has produced.") An ethical young tax collector, assigned to enforce the law against scheming geishas and wily widows, encounters a family living in a shack who cannot afford to feed their children, much less pay their taxes. Upstairs, a young woman whose family was killed in the bombing of Hiroshima is building her own nuclear weapons "to ensure world peace." Never mind that the timid tax man has a paralyzing fear of rain clouds because he is sure they contain radioactivity. A pitch-dark fresco of venality, madness, and suicide, A Billionaire mixes horror and hilarity in a way that is pure Ichikawa.-James Quandt