Actor or Actress? Matsuoka Mayu Debates Japan’s Film Industry Attitudes With Kore-eda Hirokazu

Mark Schilling
·2 min read
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Japan’s film industry is beginning to talk through some of its long-held ways of working. Ways that many say are no longer appropriate.

At the Kering-sponsored Women In Motion pow-wow on Monday at the Tokyo International Film Festival (male) director Kore-eda Hirokazu and (female) actor Matsuoka Mayu got to grips with industry issues and their own approaches towards work.

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The pair previously worked together on Kore-eda’s 2018 Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Shoplifters” and upcoming Netflix series “The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House.” 

Kore-eda said that when he filmed 2019 drama “The Truth” in France, he discovered that 40% of the crew were women. Appropriate provisions were made for those with small children, including day-care. This was “a system completely instituted in the whole society.”      

Matsuoka observed that working hours on Japanese sets are far longer than in France, with make-up artists and actors arriving as early as five in the morning to prep for the day’s filming and staying until late at night. “Working hours are just too long,” she said.  

The tight schedules of Japanese film shoots, with ten days for a two-hour film common, make anything resembling work-life balance impossible. “It would be better if everyone had more time to sleep and spend with their families,” Matsuoka said. 

Another issue raised was the all-too-common use of verbal and physical abuse. Matsuoka said she had never seen “anyone yell or say something scary” on Kore-eda’s shoots. The director said that had come to dislike raised voices on the set when he made his second film, the 1998 “After Life.” He was working with amateurs and children who didn’t understand that the on-set yelling was intended to boost energy levels. “They just thought that someone was mad at them,” he said. He decided that a softer approach was better.  

Matsuoka also spoke of how she once preferred being called an “actor” (haiyu) rather than an “actress” (joyu). “The word ‘actress’ has an aspirational sound to it, describing someone who is fresh- and clean-looking or sexy,” she said. “So, I wanted to be called an ‘actor’.” But working with seniors like Ando Sakura and the late Kiki Kirin on “Shoplifters” changed her mind.  

“I saw in their bodies that they had lived their lives as women,” she explained. “The image that I had always had, that I had to be fresh and clean-looking, that I had to be sexy, that I had to be beautiful, that I had to be worthy of praise, was no longer there. I realized that an actress’s physical presence was what made her an actress.” Substance over image.

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