越境者 - 松田優作 (Ekkyōsha-Matsuda Yūsaku)

This is a synopsis of the Japanese book 越境者 - 松田優作 (Ekkyousha-matsuda-yusaku). This book is written by Michiko Matsuda, Yusaku Matsuda's first wife. The title means "Yusaku Matsuda - border crosser". The book is partly a biography of Matsuda and partly a personal recollection.

Yusaku Matsuda was born in 1949 to a mother of Korean nationality and a Japanese father. His father was already married to another woman with whom he had children. Yusaku had two older brothers by a different father. The father of his brothers was killed during the second world war. Yusaku's birth was not initially registered, and was only registered when he was three years old. Yusaku's mother deliberately falsified his birth date as 1950.

Yusaku was born and brought up in Shimonoseki in the Yamaguchi Prefecture in south-east Japan. Initially he was a "Zainichi Kankokujin" or resident Korean. His surname was "Kim". The surname "Matsuda" was not his registered name. It seems his mother spoke to him in Japanese and brought him up as Japanese. The book doesn't mention whether he was actually registered with the Korean government as a Korean national. The book also doesn't mention if Matsuda ever visited Korea or had any contact with relatives there beyond his mother.

The area in which Yusaku lived was a red light district and his mother worked as a prostitute as well as other jobs. Yusaku's residence was in a red light area in which students at his school were forbidden from going to.

As a young man, Yusaku had intense friendships with classmates and he would write long letters to them about his worries.

Matsuda applied to become a Japanese citizen when he was already appearing on television in the 1970s police drama "Taiyo ni hoero". His wife, the author of the book, Michiko Matsuda, had family connections with the Japanese government which smoothed the path to registration.

After completing his second year of high school (which lasts for three years in Japan), at the urging of his mother, Yusaku went to America, staying with his aunt. He stayed in the town of Seaside in California. During this time he seems not to have been looked after very well, apparently not even getting proper meals, but living off bread and cornflakes. A friend of his from high school describes receiving letters from Yusaku sounding very lonely.

After he came back from America, he moved into his older brother's apartment in Tokyo. He was scared of defying his mother, who had forced him to go to America. His older brother moved back to Shimonoseki to look after his mother. Yusaku stayed in his brother's apartment. He completed high school in Tokyo and started looking for work as an actor. At this time he had cosmetic surgery to give him a "double eyelid". He did not have enough money to pay for the removal of the stitches, so he pulled them out himself, leaving jagged scars on his eyelids which he explained as being due to an accident.

In his twenties, Yusaku was involved in a violent incident in which he and a friend beat a nineteen year old student, who was hospitalized for three months. Yusaku was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended for three years, for the incident. This caused a lot of problems with his work, with advertisers and TV producers refusing to work with him. Michiko Matsuda describes receiving a large quantity of anonymous hate mail. Three of the letters contained razor blades.

During the time that Michiko was married to Yusaku, he starred in several films, such as Mottomo Kiken Na Yugi and Hitogoroshi. As he disliked visiting hairdressers, his famous permed haircuts from Taiyo Ni Hoero to Tantei Monogatari (TV Series) were all done by Michiko.

Yusaku often invited his friends to his house. He had very high standards for them and was often very critical. At one point he punched a friend because the friend had taken a part time non-acting job. The friend's wife came to their house to complain and Yusaku apologized by kow-towing to his friend. Michiko describes several other scenes of Yusaku offering abject apologies by kow-towing after some trouble.

The Matsuda household's end-of-year "Mochi-tsuki" or rice pounding parties started off as happy family events, but after the families had left, they often degenerated into drunkenness and brawling between members of the film staff. Michiko describes a scene where Yusaku felled an out of control film director (named only as "H") by punching him rapidly in the belly.

When Michiko was pregnant with their daughter, Yusaku did not help her at all. Although she was in some danger of miscarrying, Yusaku made her cook meals and scrub the bathtub even when the doctor had told her to rest. Yusaku did not seem interested in her pregnancy. After her daughter was born, however, he was very fond of their daughter and would carry her around on walks when she was a baby.

Yusaku was continually seeking change. He despised actors who played the same role over and over again. He also changed his home repeatedly. During the first six years of their marriage and living together, they moved house five times. Yusaku would also obsessively rearrange furniture in the middle of the night, leaving Michiko to tidy up after him.

Yusaku disliked being an action star. He hated the title of "Japanese Bruce Lee" that was given to him, even though Michiko thought it was a compliment. He also felt foolish playing parts with prop guns.

Yusaku also wanted to be a musician. Michiko described that, although he gathered together a lot of musicians and other people, and did concerts as well as making records, his singing was out of tune.

In the busiest year of his life, 1979, when he started making Tantei Monogatari TV series as well as making four films, Yusaku started an affair with Miyuki Kumagai, who co-starred with him in episode one of the Tantei Monogatari TV series. Before this, Yusaku had had several affairs with actresses he co-starred with, but these relationships had come to an end. Michiko had been tolerant of these, but Yusaku was no longer interested in her. When Yusaku met Miyuki Kumagai, he found her very interesting. He was very impressed with her reading books by the philosopher, Kant, and praised her to his wife. In a scene described in the book, Michiko describes Yusaku talking to Miyuki Kumagai about a book she had told him about, basically repeating what she had said about the book to him. When she interrupted him to correct something she'd said, apparently Yusaku turned to Miyuki and said "I told you she was a boring woman, didn't I?"

The marriage seems to have disintegrated as Yusaku simply did not come home for days in a row. Michiko says he came home to pick up clean clothes at times when her daughter was not home. Michiko also describes a scene where one of Yusaku's friends tried to seduce her, and suggests that Yusaku planned it in order to be able to easily divorce her.

After Yusaku left Michiko, she disposed of a huge quantity of his clothes, as well as a Vespa motor scooter which he had been given after the end of the filming of the Tantei Monogatari TV series. She willingly signed the divorce papers, and mentioned that she would miss Yusaku's friends, from "Project F", at her house.

Yusaku, who died at the age of forty from bladder cancer, feared doctors, and left a chronic ear infection untreated until surgery became necessary. Yusaku told Michiko that he thought that he would not live long, because he had lost the use of one of his kidneys after a childhood bicycle accident, after which he had not received proper treatment.

Even while he knew that he had cancer, he went on with filming Black Rain rather than receiving surgery or chemotherapy. He was urinating blood during the filming. After the end of filming, the cancer had metastised to his spine and hip, and it was too late for surgery, but he still went on refusing chemotherapy, saying that he was about to appear in a television series.

Michiko interviewed the doctor who treated him for cancer. The doctor claims to have had a special relationship with Yusaku which went "beyond words". He does not make clear whether Yusaku was fully aware of the state of his disease.

Michiko also interviewed a Zen buddhist "guru" who had influence over Yusaku in his final days. However, the guru was evasive and declined to meet her or answer many of her questions.

Web links

• アトリエ和亜印
• 特集・松田優作