[Stageplay] OIL - Matsu Takako
OIL is Matsu's stageplay in 2003. Produced by NODA MAP theatre production. Starring Matsu Takako, Fujiwara Tatsuya, Kobayashi Satomi, Noda Hideki (he's also the producer, the writer and director).
I have to say that it is Matsu's BEST stageplay next to Roningai!! The form and the directing of the play, the brilliant meaningful dialogues, Matsu's incredible performance, the musics.... are all GREAT!!! I'm surprised that the theme of this stageplay is like 'anti-America'. But actually... not really anti-America, its more of like criticizing the Japanese who forgave America too easily, although they have dropped 2 nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that it was almost like their revenge was avenged when 2 airplanes hit WTC in New York.
The setting is Shimane Prefecture in August 1945, around the end of the war. Fuji (Matsu Takako), a switchboard operator, sometimes experiences divine possession like transcending time and space over the telephone to speak with deities and spirits of the dead. She's like a shrine maiden who has a special power including to find an oil field. Her younger brother died in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb was dropped by America military, so she hates America to the core and always wants to take revenge.
The opening scene is Fuji trying to connect the telephone, and it finally rings. She picked it up, and this is the opening dialogue:
"Hello!! Finally it connected! You're so busy, ne, like always! He? Well, not that I'm in a hurry, but there's something I've always wanted to ask you! Do you have time to talk now? Nn?? I don't think it's that important to you, but it's such a big thing for me. Ano ne... if heaven really exists, why do you create it in that world? Not in this world? Why is heaven something "after" and not "now"? If you answer my question, I'll believe you! .... hello? Hello?? Are?? Did you just hang up on me? Are you mad? I'm sorry, I lied!! Actually, I need your help! If you hear me, please answer me! .... GOD!!!"
Later on, she meets an escaping military soldier, Yamato (Fujiwara Tatsuya), who resembles her younger brother. She meet Yamato exactly on August 15th, the day the war ends.
Then the American occupation troops arrive in Shimane. Just around that time, a scholar studying the relationship between the ancient Izumo Shrine and Islam publishes a theory that Islam had existed in Izumo (due to parallels between Izumo and Izuramo, or Islam).
As though following that theory, Fuji begins to utter the mythology of Izuramo, and discovers an oil field. This oil becomes a bone of contention between Japan and the United States, and the people of Shimane decide to sell the oil field to the occupation forces.
Yamato likes America alot and wants to become an American. Fuji and Yamato's dialogues intrigued me...
Fuji: Where did you plan to escape when your plane accidentally crashed here?
Yamato: America!!
Fuji: America??!? The enemy country?
Yamato: I love America!
Fuji: Pffft!!! *stomping on the ground like stepping ants to dead* America....!!
Yamato: Fuji-san, you hate America that much?
Fuji: I hate them a lot!!!
Yamato: Why?
Fuji: *throws an oil can to the ground* When two bombs dropped, you apologize with one. Wait, no... if you dropped two, you have to apologize with two! That's what revenge is!
[note: this line refers to the 9.11 incident]
Yamato: What kind of law is that?
Fuji: I'd like to take a revenge... to America... don't you want to?
Yamato: I don't know...
Fuji: Don't say 'I don't know' !!! This is about YOU!!! *she hugs him*
[note: "YOU" refers to all Japanese]
Fuji: Is hatred something can be easily erased? It has only been 1 month since then, why are you already chewing gum? Drinking cola? Eating hamburger?
After Fuji found another oil field for the second time, she had another dialogues with Yamato...
Yamato: You must be a fake!! I don't believe a girl who claims to have a God's hand! I don't believe that God's exist, anyway...
Fuji: And?
Yamato: I mean, c'mon! If God really exist why didn't God create heaven here, but on that world instead?
Fuji: So, if you understand that, you'll believe God?
Yamato: *he take the oil can and throw it down to the ground like Fuji did before* Why did the bombs were dropped in Japan?
Fuji: It was not God who dropped them...
Yamato: But if God exists, God should've been able to stop them!!!
Fuji: Humans are stupid...
Yamato: If God cannot stop it, that means God doesn't exist!!!!
Fuji: There are things that HUMAN JUST CAN'T UNDERSTAND!!!
Yamato: So if I ask God about it, God will answer like that too? How come a person who has a God's hand only can answer like that?
Fuji: I never say that my hand is a God's hand!! I'm only doing my best to save this town!!
Yamato: And I never say that I suspect God, but I suspect YOU!
Fuji: And you're just a man who looooves America, than God!!!
Yamato: Good for nothing man.
Fuji: Yesss!!! Good for nothing man!
Yamato: Thank you. But do you know? Thanks to this God's hand, the war that has ended will start again!
In the end... apparently, it was all just a dream. One of Fuji's power is to foresee the future in dream, what the period after war, is like. Just minutes later, she got a phone call from her brother who is in Hiroshima. When Fuji was trying to tell him to get out of Hiroshima immediately, suddenly the connection got off. It was too late, the bomb was dropped.
Fuji's last dialogue (and she's in tears):
"The phone was suddenly cut off. But there were actually 100,000 people died due to the explosion there. 100,000 people died. But the voice stayed on my ear. I can hear those 100,000 people in my ear. Is this an illusion?? Tell me!! Is revenge really a stupid thing???! Just in ONE DAY, that 100,000 people were killed like that!!! Is this hatred something easily erased? It's just only a month since then, why are you already chewing gum? Drinking cola? Eating hamburger? Just like the shadows of people who were burned and suffered on that town on the next day... Yamato, I can still hear your voice in my ear!!!
Hello!! Hello?? If heaven really exists, why do you create it in that world? Not in this world? Why is heaven something "after" and not "now"? If you answer my question, I'll believe you! ....I'm sorry, I lied!! Actually, I need your help! If you hear me, please answer me! .... GOD!!!
This is definitely one of Matsu's brilliant performance!! Fuji is really a different character than other characters Matsu ever played on TV dramas or movies^^
I always think, Matsu's acting skill excels alot more in stageplays and/or musical plays, rather than her TV/movie acting performances^^ But I dunno, Villon's Wife and Kokuhaku movies might change that theory.