Daigo Matsui: Transcending the Boundaries of Film, Theater, and TV Drama

Last March, I was scheduled to perform a play at the Honda Theater in Shimokitazawa, which had been a goal of mine. It was a play called "MORNING" by Simon Stephens, performed by young boys and girls.

However, two months before that, at the stage where the cast and staff were all gathered and we were about to start rehearsals, I was told that it would be difficult to make it commercially viable with that lineup, and it was cancelled.

I felt as if the feelings and determination of the young people who were supposed to be in it were being treated as if they never existed. It was so frustrating that I wanted to do something. To depict this feeling of frustration, I decided to make a film about a "play being suddenly cancelled." I was also able to have my Keio classmate, Mr. Abe, serve as the producer.

That's right. I made independent films when I was in university. Originally, I really liked creating worlds visually. When I was in high school in Fukuoka, I wanted to be a manga artist and finished about two works, but even though I liked manga, drawing them was very painful. Then I entered university and saw an orientation performance by a Keio theater circle.

When I first entered, I basically had a cynical attitude. The truth is, I really wanted to go to Waseda to do theater. However, I failed all those exams and only got into Keio's Faculty of Economics (laughs).

I wanted to do theater, so I wondered what to do, but my parents told me that Keio was better and I must go. My whole family went to Keio. My older brother was in the Faculty of Economics, my father in the Faculty of Business and Commerce, and my mother in the Faculty of Law. I thought maybe that blood runs in me, so I came to Keio.

So at Keio, I had this feeling like, "I'm not going to be dyed in your colors," but the orientation performance at Sozo Kobo was really interesting. The seniors there were interesting and shining, so I thought, I want to be here.

Creating theater there was very fun, but I started wanting to try various things. Originally, Sozo Kobo advertised that they also did film because not many new students would join if it were just a theater circle, but once I joined, it turned out to be a circle that just did theater (laughs). In that environment, while helping with things like the opening videos for plays, I thought I'd like to try making a film.

It was called "Frustration Monk," where I set a junior student as a temple monk and had him go to a soapland. Even back then, I was working in the ambiguous space between fiction and documentary. I really just made it as a prank (laughs).

After that, since I had only done comedy and sketches on stage, I wanted to do something different and made a film called "After School Friends" with zero humor. I applied to many film festivals, but didn't win any awards. I thought if I shot one more and it failed, I'd call it quits.

Since my theater work was starting to get on track, I thought I probably wasn't suited for film, but I shot a longer piece called "Just the Right Happiness." That also failed at major film festivals, but at a video festival in Okinawa, the jury president Shinya Tsukamoto gave me the Grand Prix.

Then, a film producer who had also seen my plays asked if I wanted to direct a film called "Afro Tanaka." That was my first professional work. I didn't really receive any flashy awards, but it felt like the path kept opening up as I kept going.

No, that's not the case. I really did nothing but plays and films (laughs). Besides, Sozo Kobo had over 100 people, so basically, I only wrote and directed about once a year.

That's right (laughs).

As the friends I was doing theater with started job hunting and getting job offers, I got really anxious. I realized, oh, not everyone is going to keep doing theater forever.

Yes. I had assumed we would just keep doing theater like this forever, so I was quite surprised and panicked. I tried job hunting once and applied to TV stations, but I failed them all. Before I knew it, I had to repeat a year, and while I was wondering what to do, there was an actor in my year named Riki Metsugi.

He graduated from the Faculty of Business and Commerce on schedule, but he said he was going to continue as an actor, so I said, "Let's do it together," and we formed "Gozigen."

I remember. The way we made it was the same as the circle. The only difference was the location moved from the Hiyoshi campus to Shimokitazawa. Since I was still at the university, we rehearsed in the extracurricular activity building at Hiyoshi. The first performance was called "Mon-chan in the Back of the Shrine." I had been doing comedy all along, but with Riki Metsugi as the lead, I wanted to challenge myself with a universal story.

Fortunately, various people came to see it. Katsuyuki Motohiro already came to see us back then.

It was just when I started writing drama scripts. That performance was in October, and we continued at a very fast pace with the next one in February of the following year, and then May.

I felt I had to make a living through theater, so I wanted to create a sense of momentum for the company. Basically, in theater, you usually plan by saying, "We can probably draw this many people, so let's book a theater of this size," but we decided on the next performance based solely on the class of theater we wanted to be in, and the audience numbers couldn't keep up.

Every time, we ran a deficit of around 1 million yen, and I would write scripts for dramas and such to cover it while forcing things forward. There was a lot of momentum, but after about four years, we fell apart (resuming activities in 2014).

During "Extremely Soft Path," I was under so much pressure that I drank beer throughout rehearsals, and I couldn't write the script otherwise. Metsugi was the lowest-ranking actor, and it was a rehearsal space where I had to face great seniors with tension, yet I couldn't direct without drinking beer. I was at my limit.

So, after it ended, Metsugi said, "I want to quit theater," and we decided to take a break from theater. I felt somewhat saved by that, and we suspended activities once.

The biggest difference is that back when it was a play, I was trying to do everything by myself. I wouldn't listen to others and was becoming big-headed, trying to convince myself that the expression I was creating was the most correct.

Later, while doing the play "Liliom" with Sosuke Ikematsu at the Aoyama Round Theatre and making music videos for a band I like called CreepHyp, it became interesting to reach places I never imagined by creating expressions I like together with performers I like. I remembered that creating things with everyone is fun.

During Sozo Kobo, it was fun to see someone create certain stage art and to build things together. From around the time I graduated and formed Gozigen, I forgot that and was trying too hard while spinning my wheels. While making this film, I remembered that comprehensive art is about creating together, so whether it was film or theater didn't matter much.

That's right. However, people on the outside tend to want to label it, saying, "It's like that because it's a film," so I want to think about the best way to output the same theme while staying firm and saying, "No, that's not it."

In fact, I don't really like films that are too "film-like," plays that are too "play-like," or dramas that are too "drama-like." I think people doing film love film too much, and people doing theater love theater too much. I don't think everyone has to be like that.

The offer came to me because they wanted young people around my age to watch it, and they wanted someone who had never worked with any of these members (Ken Endo, Ren Osugi, Tomorowo Taguchi, Susumu Terajima, Yutaka Matsushige, and Ken Mitsuishi).

At first, it was like a dream, and since it was my first time as a chief director for a drama, I found it difficult to create the world-view. Theater and film can't be seen unless you pay money and go there, but television is part of daily life, so I wondered what to do.

But the actors were so amazing that they could make any script interesting, so I realized I didn't have to do anything. It was a process of balancing and figuring out how to discard the things I had and the things I had prepared.

Because things keep changing on set. Also, as you know, Ren Osugi passed away during the filming of the second season... I thought about it a lot.

At that time, his family and office told me, "Ren-san definitely wants this to be completed," so I felt I had to do it and worked on it frantically. I changed what was supposed to be an episode with Ren-san as the protagonist to be from the perspective of the other four, showing the four of them giving back to Ren-san.

With only 30% of the material shot and only two more days of filming available, I had to make it work as a drama. I rewrote the entire script and, while editing from there, frantically thought about how to make this work. Everyone shared the feeling that Ren-san is alive within this world, and we should absolutely not make it a memorial drama, so it was completed.

After it ended, when I thought about how I participated in a work where such a beloved person was the leader—I used to create things thinking that if I could trigger a change in the lives of one or two people out of 100 rather than being understood by many—I realized that being seen and loved by as many people as possible is something very precious.

If you ask if I am expressing myself that way, I'm not. I tend to try to be edgy somewhere.

So, I don't know yet what I will do from here.

For example, in Clint Eastwood's recent film "The 15:17 to Paris," the young men who stopped the terrorist attack were cast as themselves in the film; they aren't actors playing roles. I heard they even used the actual train from the incident. Thinking about such things, I'm interested in how to create fiction as a Japanese film that is more convincing than reality.

When Ren-san passed away, I was very frustrated that reality destroyed the world that Ren-san loved.

I hate the idea that "in the end, fiction cannot beat reality," so I'm wondering if I can do a bit more expression where fiction overpowers reality.

Right now, reality is so intense or amazing that we can't just talk about fiction or whatever. There's no reason not to use this side. It becomes a question of which one is more urgent.

Indeed, if you put it that way, it might be true. In fact, if I had gone to Waseda and done theater, I might not have continued. I think there probably wouldn't have been anyone doubting theater there.

Keio's Sozo Kobo said, "We do film and theater," and the friends there included people who wanted to do film but were doing theater while saying, "What is this, it's a sham!" So there were many people doubting theater, which made it comfortable.

But when I started Gozigen, I was told constantly, "Why did you go to Keio and now you're doing theater?" When I say I'm from Keio, people are like, "You'll probably quit anyway," and once I stepped outside, there was a huge headwind. That's exactly why I could persevere with a defiant spirit, thinking, "No, I'm making something more interesting than you guys."

If there are people who really want to continue theater, I and the people before and after me are persevering and challenging new expressions and theater, so I think it's better to connect with them. Like, "Let's go with a counter-attack without losing."