Film Show 060: Yoshihiko Matsui
An interview with the legendary Japanese filmmaker about his upbringing, how every human has an inferiority complex, and his first film in 17 years, 'There Was Such a Thing Before' (2025)
Yoshihiko Matsui
Yoshihiko Matsui (b. 1956) is a legendary Japanese filmmaker largely known for his interest in depicting outsiders in Japanese society. After learning about Shuji Terayama’s Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974), Matsui devoted himself to film. He started a production company with Gakuryu Ishii, and made his debut feature film, Rusty Empty Can (1979), on 8mm. His films have been self-financed wonders, capturing the conflicted and complex emotional spectrum of humanity. He has made five films throughout his career, including Pig-Chicken Suicide (1981), Noisy Requiem (1988), and Where Are We Going? (2008). His newest feature is There Was Such a Thing Before (2025), and it’ll have its international premiere at this year’s edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. More information can be found here. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Matsui on January 24th, 2026 to discuss working with Ishii, how he approaches working with non-professional and professional actors, and his new feature film. Special thanks to Monika Uchiyama for translating.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: What are the earliest memories you have related to the arts? This could be film or music or anything.
Yoshihiko Matsui: When I was a teenager, I encountered the films of Shuji Terayama, specifically Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974). It was both poetic and avant-garde. Up to then, I’d only thought of films as entertainment, and it was my first time seeing a film that was an artistic expression in that way. And so after seeing this I watched all of Terayama’s films. Around this time I also discovered Kinema Junpo, the cinema magazine, which is where I learned about international arthouse film directors like Fellini, Bergman, and Kubrick. Those were my first steps into the world of film.
Are there things prior to seeing Terayama’s films, though, that were crucial in having you pursue the arts? Were you involved with the arts in school? Did your parents encourage you at all in these endeavors?
My family were farmers. I don’t know if you know this, but in a traditional Japanese house there are all these paper sliding doors. Sometimes they have artwork, but ours were all white. When I was in preschool, I drew a giant airplane on four panels while my parents were out farming. My mother came home from her farmwork and was completely shocked. She said, “When dad comes home, I’m going to have him properly discipline you.” I was so scared. But when my dad came home he said, “Is this plane flying through the air?” I told him yes. “In that case, you’re going to have to draw a bright, red sun.” I took a red crayon and drew a very large red sun. My dad was so proud of my drawing that he invited ten of my relatives over to show them the plane and said, “My son drew this! Isn’t it great?” Everyone said, “Oh, how bold!” They were saying all these nice things about my artwork. In hindsight, I realize that other parents would’ve gotten angry, so the fact that my parents didn’t get angry at me about this is something that makes me very happy. My parents kept those panels for about ten years, well into when I was in junior high school.
That’s a beautiful story. I’m wondering, did you draw a lot as a child then? Were you the sort of kid who was always doodling in school?
Yeah, I continued to draw, but I also wrote poetry and made ceramics out of clay. All of that was self-taught. My father passed away when I was in second grade, so after that it was just my mother and my siblings. They would often use the plates I made—they’d eat off them. That made me very happy.
You mentioned that you saw Terayama’s films, which led you to become a filmmaker. Were you invested in pursuing the arts in any capacity prior to this? Did you ever think about making a career out of drawing or pottery?
Of course I loved drawing and pottery, but once I encountered film, it became my favorite artistic expression by far. When I was 18, I graduated high school and someone that I knew worked at a film studio. He was able to hook me up with a part-time job there, and that’s where I met the director Sogo Ishii, who now goes by Gakuryu Ishii, and we made a group together [the production company Kyoeisha] and made 8mm films. We submitted the film we made together [Matsui’s Rusty Empty Can (1979)], to the Pia Film Festival. At the time, the jury of the festival was made up of the directors Nagisa Oshima, Nobuhiko Obayashi, Yoichi Takabayashi, and Shuji Terayama—all the big names. Our film was selected. There was a big party and they all praised my film. I remember at one point, Oshima was to my right and Terayama was to my left and they smacked me on the back and said, “Matsui, you’ve really got talent!” I remember thinking, “I have to become a director.” (laughter).
Did you make any short films prior to your debut? Were you experimenting at all with your 8mm camera?
Rusty Empty Can was the first film that I ever made. There wasn’t any experimentation before that. Both myself and Ishii worked as staff, both as an editor and assistant director. As independent filmmakers, it’s really hard to make a living, so we were really just trying to survive through part-time jobs.
What part-time jobs did you have? And do you feel like there were any experiences you had in those jobs that informed the way you approached filmmaking or the arts? And this could just be logistical things, too.
Among my part-time jobs, most of my work was from working on film sets. But because my family was farmers, I also did farmwork. This included growing vegetables and rice, but I also worked in pig farming and chicken farming. The pay is quite good for those types of jobs because it’s really heavy labor, and a lot of young people didn’t really want to do that kind of work. I just wanted to do anything that could make me as much money as possible—I needed to fund my films.
I read an interview you did in the past where you said that prior to making Rusty Empty Can, you didn’t necessarily have the most positive opinion of gay people, but through making it, you realized that they were just like anyone else. How did you decide on this being the topic of your debut? And I’m also wondering if you had seen a film like Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) by this time given its depiction of queer people and outsiders.
Of course I had seen Funeral Parade of Roses by then, but it wasn’t particularly on my mind while I was making Rusty Empty Can. As to why I made a gay film, you have to understand that Japan was very conservative back then with regards to ideas about sexuality. I had been watching films that featured gay relationships, whether it was men in love with men or women in love with women. That made me question, well, if love between a man and a woman is considered romance, can’t love between two men for be considered love, too? I hadn’t even considered this until seeing these films—that two men could love each other, that this could be considered a romance. I started to think, well, this must mean that we’re all equal.
I was thinking about films featuring love triangles with heterosexual relationships, and I started to wonder what it’d be like to feature three men in a love triangle instead. I started to write and shoot this film, and it was a sort of challenge for myself. The characters experience all the things that those in a love triangle typically experience: love, envy, they comfort each other, they encourage each other, and of course they fight. This made me realize that people are all the same. Through the experience of making that movie, I grew to be very supportive of gay people and I continue to have that stance today.
Do you remember the films you saw that showed these gay relationships?
So, of course Funeral Parade of Roses was one of those films, and it was probably the one that shocked me the most. It may have just been one scene, but there was Midnight Cowboy (1969). There were Japanese underground films shot on 8mm that showed gay stories. There was also Visconti’s Death in Venice (1971). Also around that time, in conversations with people like Oshima and Terayama, they often talked about sexuality and, frequently, queer sexuality.
I’m thinking of different scenes happening in Japan in the 1970s. You have the Nikkatsu Roman Pornos as well as those from Toei. There were also independent filmmakers creating small-budget works on small-gauge film. Were you ever creating works that were in direct response to what else was happening in Japan? They feel distinct from everything else that was being made, despite sharing a similar spirit.
Of course I wanted to make films that were different from those I was encountering, and even though that wasn’t the first thing on my mind, the main goal was to draw from the depths of my soul, my gut impulse—what did I want to make? What was the story going to be? What were the images? I wanted to translate all this into a film. And because it comes from deep in my heart, I think it’s a very unique film. I wasn’t thinking about what might appeal to the different, existing film worlds; it was more about what I wanted to see, the world I wanted to depict. I would say that all five of my films are born in this organic way where I ask, what world do I want to make right now?
Do you mind talking about your relationship with Ishii? I know that he worked as your DP on Rusty Empty Can and that you were also his editor on Crazy Thunder Road (1980). Was there something you learned from working with Ishii that you feel like you wouldn’t have learned otherwise? I’m curious to just hear any stories about your time working together.
Ishii has a very particular language—it’s almost like an “Ishii lingo.” His films contain a lot of action scenes, and I remember when I first arrived as an assistant director on one of his films, I’d hear him use a lot of onomatopoeias, like, “You have to go bahhhh or gahhhh or dahhhh!” (laughter). He’d use these kinds of sounds and I had no idea what he was talking about (laughter). On set, there was an actor who was Ishii’s friend since elementary school. I went up to him and I said, “You’ve known him long enough, can you translate what he’s saying? What’s he even talking about?” And he said, “Ah, Matsui… you’re still a beginner. You don’t understand Ishii’s language. What direction was he pointing in when he made that sound?” “Oh okay, he was pointing at the car.” “That’s what he means—he wants you to go straight for that.” It was a combination of gesture and sound. It took me about a week to understand what he was saying, and I remember the actor coming up to me later saying, “I think you’ve finally figured it out!” (laughter). The same would be true in the editing room. He’d use the same kind of language to describe cuts that he would make in the edit. But the longer that we worked together, I kept asking for clarification, so he started to properly use words around me.
A lot of things I learned from him were on set. For instance, through watching his directing, I learned how a script may feature specific kinds of images or locations or emotions, but those are often not the same as what we end up accomplishing in production. He made me realize that a script is something you do at your desk, and that production is something that’s completely different—suddenly you have the actor’s voices, you have sounds from the environment, the landscape is really different from what you could’ve even imagined while writing the script. It’s important to work very flexibly.
So that’s one thing I learned from him. The other thing is that he’s an incredible editor. That’s something I watched first-hand when I worked part-time on these sets—he’s incredibly sharp, even compared to other editors. He’s very passionate about the idea that the finished product is going to be shown to people. I’m always fixated on my own expression and my own ideas, but he was really fixated on not boring the audience and finding ways to make things entertaining for them.
Can you talk about how you approach sound and music in your film? What you were saying earlier about Rusty Empty Can and wanting to make a gay love triangle based on what you’d seen with heterosexual romances made me think of the sex scene in that film—you include the song “Itsudemo Yume wo,” which is a very famous love song. I’m also thinking of the opening of Pig-Chicken Suicide (1981), where you have the animal noises over the Korean National Anthem.
A lot of the music I include in my films are things I’ve decided on as I’m writing the script, but as to where I may precisely place the music, that comes up in the edit. But when I say that I’ve decided on the songs, I mean that I’ve decided on the ending theme. For the music that is incorporated into the actual film itself, I might decide it during the storyboarding phase or while we’re shooting or in the edit; it all comes together gradually. As to what kind of role music and sound plays in my films… ideally, I wish my films were completely silent. I wouldn’t want any sound, diegetic or otherwise. I often think it’d be best to just have the focus be on the actors’ expressions and their movements, as well as the cuts made in the edit in a way that doesn’t bore the audience and allows me to convey what I want to say. That would be ideal, but it’s often not enough to show what’s going on in the interiority of the characters this way, so that’s when we use music or sound design to make it legible to the audience.
I know that Terayama didn’t like your second film, Pig-Chicken Suicide. Do you remember what he said about the film?
His critique was that the scene where the pig is slaughtered was too long. He said it’d be uncomfortable for audiences to sit through that. “I could never shoot a scene like that,” he said. “But you tried… why?” I said, “Well, as humans we eat pork. Isn’t it natural that we see the act of them being slaughtered and cut up?” I said that to Terayama with a bit of a snarky tone. I remember he was frustrated, but then he said, “You’re right, it’s exactly as you say. But wouldn’t it be helpful if you separated the act of eating from the act of showing?” It’s really stuck in my mind, how I was able to disarm him. His initial anger and criticism toward the scene became toned down. A lot of staff members who worked with Terayama were there and they later came up to me and said, “I can’t believe you said that to him, I can’t believe you spoke to him that way!” They were all so intimidated by him. But from my experience, when you’re an artist and talking to another artist, you have to be honest with each other, you have to be direct. And that’s why I was able to tell him that without any hesitation. So even though he was initially critical, he seemed to be happy with my response to his question.
Is the slaughter footage something you shot yourself while working on these pig and chicken farms?
No, that footage isn’t from when I was working on the farms. I may have not even been working there at the time. We got special permission from a pig farm and a pig slaughterhouse to allow us to film. I was there when it was shot, but I wasn’t holding the camera.
You just mentioned how you were able to disarm Terayama. Is that something you hope your films can do too? Like, do you want your audience to view these outsiders, disarm them, and help them better understand who these people are?
What I think is important in my films is the ability to convey the interiority of the people onscreen. Something I’m sure about is that all of us have a complex. We all have this sense of inferiority, and it’s something I imbue all of my characters with, though not because they actually are inferior. People in the mainstream experience this too, but I want it to be apparent that those on the outside, that even if they have this complex, are still able to have romances, experience frustrations, and go through all of the same things in life that everyone else in society goes through. My films may depict protagonists on the margin, such as buraku or Zainichi Koreans, and while they may have complexes because of their societal position, other characters might have a complex regarding their body or a psychological state.
Regardless, all of us carry this sense of inferiority, and that’s true of the audience as well. Of course, every so often you might encounter someone who doesn’t have any complexes about themselves, but for the most part, we all experience this feeling, and I think that audience members are able to watch my films and insert themselves into the positions of the characters. They might think, “Oh, this character is going through a difficult thing, and so am I, but I have to keep on living.” At the core of a lot of human emotion is this complex, this sense of inferiority, and it’s just that I choose to depict it with people who live at the margins.
Was there a specific experience that led to this realization? And I’m wondering if you could share specific feelings of inferiority that you had about yourself and how you were able to overcome that.
This is a very personal story, so I don’t know how deep I can get into this. When I was little, I had a stutter. During elementary school, I have this memory of being in Japanese class where we were supposed to read the text, one line at a time, starting with the front of the class. I was nervous about being next, but right after the person in front of me went, my teacher said, “Next will be the person behind Matsui-kun.” She skipped over me. I think it was out of some strange kindness, that she wanted to spare me the embarrassment of struggling through that sentence. But from my perspective, even if I had a stutter I wanted to read. I remember coming home and telling my family about this experience, and everyone looked down—they wouldn’t look me in the eye. My mother started crying.
Strangely enough, after I made Rusty Empty Can and had my idols—Terayama and Oshima—tell me that it was good, it built up my confidence and I stopped stuttering. I had issues with words that started with vowels. I remember that day, when my teacher skipped over me, the sentence that was coming up started with aki (“autumn”). She knew that I struggled with words that started with vowels, and this is probably why she skipped over me. Looking back at it now, it’s so funny that at age 23, just from being praised by my idols, it would boost my confidence so much to make my stutter disappear (laughs). It’s quite shocking.
Given that we’re talking about confidence, I wanted to talk about how your films are made on a small budget. I’m wondering if there were specific challenges you faced. These parameters force you to come up with interesting creative decisions, and I’m wondering if there’s a specific memory you have of finding unique ways to get a certain shot or capture a certain atmosphere as a result of your circumstances.
My films are described as difficult, and I think a lot of people assume that production is very challenging, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. I’ve never actually struggled on set. Nothing has ever gone poorly. Of course there are things like getting permissions for locations, but I find that if you just talk to people without lying and negotiate with a sense of passion, most things go through. That can get a little bit difficult with public permits, but I really have to say that I’ve never felt a sense of difficulty in making my films.
With my newest film, There Was Such a Thing Before (2025), we first started filming in the middle of summer and I suffered a heatstroke. We had to halt the shoot and reschedule for the following May, which is almost a year later. This was done out of precaution for everyone’s health because anyone could’ve gotten a heatstroke. I was worried because, at that point, we had only shot about half of the film and we’d have to wait a year for the other half. My biggest concern was the actors’ schedules. One of the leads, Arata Iura, is quite popular. I thought that we might have to recast him for the remaining half of the film. I spoke to him and his manager and he told me, “No, of course I’d move my schedule around so we can make this happen. I want to be in this film.” In the end, most of the staff and the actors remained for the second half, and I was able to make adjustments in the script and with locations—we were able to make it work.
So my sets can be difficult, yes, but I never get a sense of actual struggle. When you talk it out with the people involved, you can reach a state of understanding. With Arata, he had watched my films before and said he was a fan, and he was excited to be in his first Matsui film. We had a great time working on set, and I’m really looking forward to being in Rotterdam with him when our film premieres. I’m excited to get a beer together and say “cheers!”
What is it like to work with professional actors versus amateur actors? You’ve primarily worked with the latter, so I’m wondering if you approach working with them in different ways. Do you feel like when someone has more experience that you have to work with them differently?
With amateur actors, non-actors, and professionals, I ask all of them to act naturally for the role they’re playing. But in that sense, oftentimes with non-actors, they do things that are way more interesting than professionals. Like you said, actors come with all of this experience and they end up making these choices that I’m tired of seeing—they come with these preconceptions of how things are supposed to happen. When someone’s sad, it’s not uncommon for a person to smile through the sadness. I’ll say something like this and an actor might say, “I didn’t think of that!” They think that by having down-turned eyes or through welling up with tears, that this is sadness. But I tell them that it’s too ordinary, too predictable.
With non-actors, their presence is often enough. If they have a sense of presence, then on the screen and through the image, they have these incredible auras. And with professional actors, it’s so easy for them to go into hokey acting. With the professionals, I tell them not to bring in any of the baggage of theater acting—don’t overact in the way you would in the theater. And with the non-actors I just say, “You’re free to do whatever you want.” (laughter). I’ll tell them, “Act however you want and don’t study. Come as a blank slate and do whatever your impulses tell you to do. If there’s anything I want to be done differently, then I’ll direct you to do so.” In ordinary conversation we talk frankly and flatly, and I think that’s how conversations should appear onscreen.
I’m thinking about the conflicted emotions that appear in your films, as well as the violence that is portrayed. Some of the most violent scenes are when you see outcasts interacting with those who are a part of “normal” society. In Noisy Requiem (1988) we see that with the little sister on the bus, and in your new film we see how these people affected by the nuclear explosion are ignored by those who aren’t. They’re bonded by this event, and I’m curious if you feel that rejection from dominant culture in this way can be a positive thing for those on the fringes of society.
Anger and rage are incredibly unpredictable. It’s hard to know when that type of feeling can be triggered. In both my films and in society, I actually don’t think it has to do with a clash between outsiders and the mainstream. Rage and violence can happen amongst outsiders and amongst the mainstream; it has little to do with the characters’ societal position. It has everything to do with the fact that people are unpredictable and that rage can be easily triggered—it can be triggered by a slight shift in words. A person’s reaction can be to tolerate what is happening, to not say anything, while others may react with violence.
In my films, there’s this basis of love, and from this love can come jealousy and hatred, and on that same plane there is rage and violence. How a person reacts is something I can only discover through the process of writing and making the film. For myself, I’m not a violent person, and I’ve never thought to be physically violent. My ethos is always to talk through things and to reach a sense of understanding, but with my characters it really changes depending on their personality and the situation they’re in. So whether it’s an expression of love or rage, writing the script is a process of trying to discover what sparks that feeling; it’s not something I decide upon out of nowhere, it’s really from writing scripts that I encounter it for the first time.
Rusty Empty Can and Noisy Requiem end with these violent bursts of energy. They’re dramatic but also ordinary—it feels like a pattern that’ll presumably persist in the characters’ realities even after the film ends. I’m wondering about your thoughts on endings in general, and how you negotiate this idea of finality in your films. A lot of filmmakers place a lot of emphasis on endings to wrap a neat bow on their work, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case for you.
That’s true. I don’t try to wrap things up in a neat little bow. I’ve worked with a sound recordist and engineer named Tomoharu Urata for a long time, and he once said something on set that I overheard. He said, “Matsui always manages to push away his protagonist by the end of the film.” When I heard that I thought, oh, that’s really true, even if I wouldn’t exactly word it that way nor would I say it’s exactly my intention. For me, I want the audience to walk away from the film wondering about the kind of life that the protagonist is gonna go on living. As the person who wrote the script, I have the answer, but I don’t want that to be clear to the audience. It’s true though, my films always end up with the protagonist getting abandoned.
I know you were affected by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. I’m curious if your experiences with that have shaped your scripts at all, especially There Was Such a Thing Before.
When the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake happened, my family home was completely destroyed, and I had to take time off of work from Tokyo to rebuild it. It was a very difficult period. Something that I encountered was that, in this region where we were all struggling, so many people showed so much kindness even though they were struggling themselves. There were people who said they had extra rice and would come over and give it to us. There were stores nearby who’d say, “These vegetables are about to go bad, let’s all cook and eat this together.” I was really struck by how many people could show kindness in these difficult times. However, there were people who acted in the complete opposite way, who acted quite cruel. I realized that in times of difficulty, people really show their true sense of values—I was really confronted with the full spectrum of humanity. At the time, I wanted to make a film about it, but I diverted all of my savings to rebuilding my family home and I wasn’t able to do it.
Then in 2011, there was the Great East Japan Earthquake, and about a year after that, I visited Fukushima. The scene that I saw there was exactly what I saw during the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. There was all this destruction, all these houses that were destroyed, but I also noticed the same behaviors—people were banding together and showing a lot of kindness. I thought, okay, maybe I will make a movie about this. However, if you make a movie about Fukushima, it ostensibly becomes an anti-nuclear film, and it’s an anti-nuclear film, it’s very hard to get funding. I thought, I need to work in order to fund it myself. I worked for 10 years and now I’ve finally been able to make a film about this topic. It just struck me that people can suddenly transform and become cruel during times of difficulty. And at the same time, there are people who you don’t think you’re close to or who you don’t get along with who really show up with a lot of kindness. Moments of struggle are when people show their value system but also their full sense of humanity.
There’s a question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?
I’d have to say that I’m most proud of the fact that I’m surrounded by people who are very kind and wonderful. It’s hard to say what I like about myself, but a lot of people tell me that they like my personality, that I’m very tolerant. I’m accepting of all kinds of opinions and people, and we’re all just doing our best to live. So, let’s all just do our best and find a sense of happiness together! I’ve been told by the staff and actors who work with me that they want to keep following me in this journey.
Yoshihiko Matsui’s new feature film, There Was Such a Thing Before (2025), has its international premiere at this year’s IFFR. More information can be found here.
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