Sumako Matsui

Who They Were

Sumako Matsui (松井須磨子, Matsui Sumako) was a Japanese stage and film actor and singer, active during the Meiji period (1868–1912). She was born on March 8, 1886, in Kiyono, and died on January 5, 1919, in Yokoteramachi. She is remembered as one of the first major actresses of modern Japanese theatre and as a central figure in the shingeki (new drama) movement.

Matsui was born as Masako Kobayashi in Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, the fifth daughter and last of nine children of Tohta Kobayashi. At age six she was adopted by the Hasegawa family in Ueda, and in 1900 she graduated from Ueda school. When her adoptive father died, she returned to her birth family, but her natural father died in the same year. At seventeen she moved to Tokyo.

Life and Career

Matsui married in 1903 at the arrangement of relatives, but the marriage ended in divorce within a year. In 1908 she married Seisuke Maezawa, a man from the same country village. The following year, 1909, she joined Shoyo Tsubouchi's newly established theatre group. She divorced Maezawa in October 1910.

Her breakthrough came in 1911 with her portrayal of Nora in A Doll's House. In 1913, together with the shingeki director Hogetsu Shimamura, she established the Geijutsu-za theatre troupe (芸術座, げいじゅつざ), of which she was a member. Her performance as Katusha in Tolstoy's Resurrection, translated by Shimamura, made her an acclaimed actress. The song "Katyusha's song," written by Shinpei Nakayama, which she sang in the production, became a huge hit, selling over 20,000 copies at the time. It is said to have been the first ryūkōka song, a genre of popular commercial music that emerged in the early twentieth century.

Shimamura died of the Spanish flu on November 5, 1918. Matsui, who had been having an affair with him, committed suicide by hanging on January 5, 1919.

Why They Matter

Matsui was a pioneering figure in Japanese theatre at a moment when the role of women on stage was being redefined. Before the shingeki movement, female roles in traditional Japanese theatre such as Kabuki were played by male actors (onnagata). Matsui's performances in Western realist dramas brought a new kind of female presence to the Japanese stage, and her fame helped popularise the idea of the actress as a public figure.

Her role in Resurrection also had a broader cultural impact. The song she sang, "Katyusha's song," became a nationwide phenomenon and is credited as the first ryūkōka, a style of popular song that blended Western musical elements with Japanese lyrics. This marked a turning point in Japanese popular music and helped establish the commercial recording industry in Japan.

Her death, following Shimamura's, became a widely discussed event and cemented her place in the public imagination as a tragic romantic figure. The 1947 film The Love of Sumako the Actress was based on her life.

The Name in Japanese

The name in Japanese is 松井須磨子.

• Kana reading: まつい すまこ
• Romaji: Matsui Sumako

The name is made up of four characters:

• 松 (まつ, matsu) — meaning "pine tree." This is the first character of the family name.
• 井 (い, i) — meaning "well" (as in a water well). Together with 松, it forms the surname Matsui, a common Japanese surname.
• 須 (す, su) — meaning "must" or "necessary." In this name it is used for its phonetic value, contributing the syllable su.
• 磨 (ま, ma) — meaning "to polish" or "to grind." Here it contributes the syllable ma.
• 子 (こ, ko) — meaning "child." This character is a common suffix in female given names.

The given name 須磨子 is written with characters that together read Sumako. The first two characters, 須磨, also form the word suma, which can refer to a beach or shore, though in this name they are primarily phonetic. The final character 子 is the standard feminine suffix.

Legacy

Matsui's grave lies in the Kobayashi family plot, her birth name, in her hometown of Matsushiro. Remains are also buried at Tamon Temple in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Her wish to be buried alongside Shimamura was vehemently refused by Shimamura's wife, and so the joint burial never took place.

Her life and career have been the subject of later artistic works, including the 1947 film The Love of Sumako the Actress. Her role in establishing the actress as a legitimate and celebrated profession in Japan, and her connection to the birth of the ryūkōka song, have kept her name alive in Japanese cultural history. The Geijutsu-za troupe she helped found continued to be an important institution in Japanese theatre after her death.