Memories of Matsuko

The movie Memories of Matsuko manipulates music in a way that sets it between being a musical and being a regular movie. Scenes are filled with drama and sometimes humor interlaced with musical moments, sometimes small and sometimes large. 

The audience gets a riveting preview of the musical nature in the first scenes as the movie opens up to a fast paced montage overlaid with Japanese pop music. The music returns to the background as we meet the main character and learn that his aunt Matsuko has died. The background music is melancholy and contemplative once we learn Matsuko has died which vaults the viewer in the mindset of the main character as he struggles with feelings about a dead aunt he never knew. The background music later influences the ambiance of the story when the main character is cleaning out his dead aunt’s house and sees a mysterious group of people watching him outside. The music takes a dramatic tone causing us to interpret them as the main character does, in that they must have had a hand in his aunt’s death. We later find out that this is not the case, but the tone of the music compels us to a different conclusion.

Soon after that we receive our first musical flashback dealing with Matsuko. It takes place during Matsuko’s time as a Junior High Teacher, as she sings with a choir travelling down a river on a boat. This song shows one of the important phases in her life where she was happy. Throughout the story each important phase in Matsuko’s life is marked by a musical number showing her feelings toward herself. This first flashback displays her happiness as a Junior High Teacher with a choir song, but this happiness doesn’t last as she steals from another teacher to cover up for a student and is fired. We see music in another flashback, this time as a child. She is in a department store watching a musical act by performers while she makes her father laugh. This musical number demonstrates another era of her life. It shows the childlike part of her life when she was also happy.

The movie moves later on into her life after she fled her parents house and is living with an abusive boyfriend. She has returned to the same store she saw the performance as a kid, but this time the singing brings less joy and even calls out that she is lying to her brother. We can visualize how she has lost the happiness she had as a child through the tone of the music. After this we do not see another musical section until after her abusive boyfriend dies and she becomes the lover of his rival author. The song is similar to a home product commercial before she skips into a cartoon sunset, thus marking another era of her life and happiness. Her happiness is fleeting when her lover breaks up with her after she speaks to his wife, and the song matches this by losing its happy tone.

The movie lays out each major change in her life by song. She works for a brothel which occurs entirely through a montage accompanied by a steamy song, ending in sadness as the brothel closes. She marries a barber in another montage with a song. This song is jubilant and similar to the songs of her youth as she had finally escaped the dark parts of her life. This montage concludes when she is sent to prison, but another montage with a song starts, this time about her life in prison. It is a rap song showing how hard life is in prison ending with her learning to be a hairstylist. This one concludes sorrowfully as she finds out her husband remarried.

After that the montages end and the singing becomes very sparse. She does some singing at a Yakuza bar for her new boyfriend/former student and later sings as she decorates her garbage filled shack. The last musical number is the culmination as Matsuko ascends to heaven. She sings the choir song from her Junior High teacher years and we revisit the major parts of her life before she climbs to heaven. Music in this movie represents the changes in Matsuko’s life, and sets the tone for the audience.