Great Tale of the Foundational 4½ Tatami Room is a Japanese manga by Leiji Matsumoto. It depicts the life of the 19-year old protagonist, Adachi Futoshi, and the people around him who all live in a boarding house where each room is a four-and-a-half-tatami size room. It was serialized in Bessatsu Manga Action from 1970 to 1974.

A live- action film adaptation by Nikkatsu was released on August 16, 1980. The catchphrase on the promotional poster read, “Burning with dreams, hopes and ambition, I’m 19 years old and in my youth!” (A DVD was released in August 2002 and reissued in October 2018.)

Issue #792 of the bi-weekly movie magazine Kinejun, published for the second half of August 1980, contained the following interview with Leiji Matsumoto where he discusses the film and the manga it was based on.

Leiji Matsumoto interview

As time passes, the sound of rolling

Consideration for each generation, a difficult expression

Interviewer: “Four and a half tatami mats” is a Japanese term that has been used in the past to refer to the movie version of Otoko Oidon. Next, Great Tale of the Foundational 4½ Tatami Room will be adapted into a movie. How did this film adaptation come about?

Matsumoto: This time, Nikkatsu made a straightforward request to make the film. Unlike Otoko Oidon, they didn’t insist on a specific actor playing the lead role, and they wanted to preserve the image of the original as much as possible. I thought that would be a good idea, so we started the project.

Interviewer: From the beginning, if you were going to make a movie of this, did you have a plan to make it both live-action and anime?

Matsumoto: I thought I could do it more realistically with anime, but the original story was based on the image of various actors, so I wanted to try doing it in live action as well. So, Julie is played by Kiyoshi Maekawa, and the Ramensoya owner is played by Ippei Souda.

Interviewer: Who plays Madsona (Juso)?

Matsumoto: This is a role that has become more and more important to me over the years, so when the time came, I couldn’t choose and I gave up. (Laughs)

Interviewer: You are co-director with Nakao Sone, right?

Matsumoto: Mr. Sone was in charge of most of it, so I was a director in name only, and I’m embarrassed to even be called director. Well, in a sense, I think you can interpret it as my opinions being included in the structure and framework of the film. If I were to walk around on the set, I wouldn’t know what would be on screen. (Laughs)

Interviewer: Did you have frequent meetings about the production plan?

Matsumoto: Yes, I did. From the script stage, down to every word of the narration. From that point on, we discussed the direction of the film, since it was a general release. It has to be expressive enough for adults to watch, but also for children to appreciate it in their own way, so we have to be considerate of each generation. This was a bit of a challenge.

Interviewer: I think the dialogue is different from anime.

Matsumoto: Yes, I think it is a little different. But there are basic ways of saying things. Words that can be expressed more concisely, just like in anime. But with live action, of course, there is acting involved, so I think there are problems with lines that are spoken while moving, like getting out of breath or not being able to catch a breath. I believe Mr. Sone will be very considerate and take care of that. I apologize for leaving it up to him.

Interviewer: What was your impression when you went to the filming location?

Matsumoto: I went on the first day and the day after, and I understood that movies are expensive. I used to say that stories about how many millions of yen a film cost were lies, lies, lies. But I think it must be hard to secure a studio and the labor costs that come with that. Anime is more accurate in calculating the funds.

Interviewer: I think the bird is an important character in the original work.

Matsumoto: That’s right. You can include it in anime, but there’s no way in live action. They talked about painting a chicken, but they gave up because they couldn’t do that either. (Laughs)

Interviewer: Apparently, it was filmed at the boarding house in Hongo where you actually lived.

Matsumoto: It was a place in that area that still retains a lot of atmosphere. I don’t know exactly when it was filmed.

Interviewer: Is there a definite time period?

Matsumoto: Not really. The story takes place roughly in the present. In other words, It vaguely captures the period from that time until now, so it’s not specific. But when you shoot film in a town, the cars are modern, and so are the signs, so it’s a modern town.

Interviewer: Is that a discrepancy with the original work in terms of the image?

Matsumoto: As long as the protagonist’s living environment doesn’t change, I don’t really care. Of course, when I drew it, I represented the town of that era (about ten years ago).

Every night, the female college student in the room next door…

Interviewer: Was it nostalgia for your youth that led you to draw the original work?

Matsumoto: No, it was more casual than that. I was just taking it easy, casually depicting the fact that things like this happen. There was no nostalgia or anything. But I was just, how can I put it, I was happy to draw it.

Interviewer: I empathized with the main character (Adachi Futoshi)…

Matsumoto: That’s right. I let Futoshi speak for me, straightforward and as unashamed as possible.

Interviewer: What was your youth like?

Matsumoto: None of the real things were interesting. It wasn’t full of ups and downs, and looking back on it, I didn’t find anything interesting at all. And I think this is partly because of cynicism, but people seemed to live really interesting lives. I saw a TV show about a restaurant in a world that has nothing to do with me, like “summer, beach,” and I just think, “there are people who do things like that, damn, that must be interesting.” I just go back and forth between my room and that restaurant. It was a really ordinary boarding house life with no redeeming features. Every day, time passed me by in a leisurely manner….

Interviewer: Youth is often thought of as a cycle of life, but your works are about youth, struggling with oneself.

Matsumoto: You see, I’m a lazy person. I have a habit of staying in one place and not moving. I can’t change jobs, or change direction. Once I start something, I have the habit of continuing to do the same thing. If I live in the same place, I’ll stay even if the conditions get a little worse, even now. In the end, once I’ve found my place, I can’t move even if I’m told to because I’m too loose and lazy.

And so in the manga, the story moves around the main character. Therefore, wandering is not something that I do, although I do have wanderlust in my personality. I like traveling, but once I settle in one place as the basis of my life, I won’t move. It’s a contradiction between my agrarian nature and the wandering nature of a hunter. but in reality, it seems like my true nature is to just lie around in one place like a cow.

I’m originally from Shikoku, but was born and raised in Kyushu. I was born in the year of the tiger, which means that for about eight months of the year, I have the gentle blood of Shikoku in my veins, and I spend a lot of time there. It makes me very calm and tranquil. (Laughs)

For the other four months, I suddenly turn into a tiger, making a lot of noise and self-destructing. Then, for eight months, I’m just lolling around. Judging from my birthplace and hometown, this is exactly what my personality is like…

Interviewer: Do you have any memories of living in a boarding house?

Matsumoto: What made the biggest impression on me was when a female college student living in the room next door brought her boyfriend over and he stayed there every night. That was really sad. When I first saw it, I was happy because it was a treat for the eyes, but from the second time onwards, the sadness was indescribable.

So when it started next door, I couldn’t stay in the room and had to put on my sandals and escape. I couldn’t stay any longer, so I wandered around outside at night. That sadness, I just couldn’t bear it. So I hope that people who do things like that pay close attention to their surroundings. (Laughs) They’re free to do it, though.

I was outraged. It was going on in the next room all night long, and I was hugging my knees and lounging around by myself. It was just ridiculous.

Interviewer: Just like in the story.

Matsumoto: That was definitely the case. It was beyond lonely, it was just stupid. I didn’t even get a nosebleed. It was so pathetic. I wanted to be the one to do it, not just watch. (Laughs)

Interviewer: How long did it go on?

Matsumoto: I was there for six years. The boarding house itself was nice.

Interviewer: Does the ‘Salmatake’ [fungus] actually exist?

Matsumoto: It grew because I was sloppy and made a mess of my room. It’s easy to grow, and you can still grow it today. Salmatake is a type of mushroom that grows quickly. It’s yellow in color. I didn’t think about drawing it later in life. (Laughs) Anyway, when it grew, I didn’t think I could stop it. I thought I’d feed it to someone.

The “4½ Tatami Room” that will last forever in my mind

Interviewer: What motivated you to start drawing The story?

Matsumoto: I’m basically an ultra-sloth person, so at the time I was drawing girls’ manga and science-fiction, and no one believed me when I said I wanted to draw what was inside me, so I gradually started to put out those kinds of things in the Machiners series, which came earlier, then I gradually transferred to the 4½ Tatami Room series, and It was fun to draw as my true nature was laid bare.

Interviewer: And that became the basis for your later works like Gun Frontier.

Matsumoto: Yes, it did. As with SF, when I was drawing 4½ Tatami Room stories, I wasn’t drawing to impress readers or to make something interesting, I was able to focus on drawing what I wanted to draw. If I didn’t want to draw something, I stopped drawing it. It was good for my mental health.

Up until then, I had made some half-baked works where I couldn’t draw what I wanted, and in the end I was just following a story without a backbone. When I look at them now, I don’t know what I was drawing…

Interviewer: Is the theme of this work a man’s dream, trust, and friendship?

Matsumoto: As time passes, I want to roll around and eventually achieve my dream, and die with a smile on my face at the end, which is a very selfish idea. (Laughs) In this case, you’d think I would have made the main character an aspiring manga artist, but I didn’t do that because my friends were students and salarymen, and I wanted to persistently depict only the parts that were common to everyone.

Interviewer: What happened to Adachi Futoshi and the others afterward?

Matsumoto: I have no idea. Even I don’t know. I have no idea what they would have become if they took the manga away from me.

Interviewer: What are your plans for your future films?

Matsumoto: In the spring of ’81, I’ll do Galaxy Express 999 Part 2, then an original film in the summer. In the summer of ’82, I’ll do Queen Millennia as anime. The original film is actually a big problem, and I have no intention of making something that is an extension of 999 or Yamato.

I want to make a so-called “movie” made with pictures. A film that has the fantasy of anime and elements that can only be made with pictures, which can’t be done in live action. Plus something that’s really solid as a film. I don’t know if it will be accepted or not, but I want to try making something that exists in the sense that the pictures move. I want to make a movie, but not a manga movie. I intend to make it next summer, even though it will be drawn as pictures.

Interviewer: What about Yamato?

Matsumoto: If I try any more, I’ll just push it too far, and it will end up destroying the image and the dream, so I think I’m satisfied at this stage. But when it comes to 999, my blood still boils.

Interviewer: You said before that you were going to make Queen Emeraldas into an anime.

Matsumoto: I’d like to do it on TV first. Also, the TV special Legend of Marine Snow will be on August 12th.

Interviewer: How is your manga activity going?

Matsumoto: I want to draw something solid in the style of the Battlefield series, so I’d like to take a break from movies for a year or two and concentrate on manga. Once you start a movie, you can’t stop. I’ll do as much as I can, but there are many things I still want to draw. I want to settle down and focus on them.

Interviewer: Finally, is Tatami Room still ongoing for you?

Matsumoto: It’s something that will go on forever in my mind, like a tickertape. I drew what happens every day, and the human psychological state is a daily repetition, so even if I no longer live there, I think it would be the same. It’s not as if I’m evolving, so I myself have not changed at all since that time. The environment that has changed, but I’ve only gotten older. But that shallowness, in my desires, hasn’t changed at all. There are things that never change. And I don’t want to lose it.

Interviewer: That’s your youth, isn’t it?

Matsumoto: Yes. I spend eight months of the year lazing around like a cow, being opportunistic and lazy. The remaining four months I run around like a tiger, with all my might. I want to keep doing this. At first I really resented being called a cow, because I’m a tiger. But no matter how you look at it, it’s true. Maybe it’s not 8 months and 4 months, but 11 months and 1 month. (Laughs) I think that’s fine, a tiger only needs to run once a year.

I’m starting to get a bit careless about what I say… (laughs)

I want to continue making movies like this for a long time to come, so please continue to support me.

Interviewer: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

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