Where the Wild Ladies Are

by Matsuda Aoko

  As it was, there I sat in the bathhouse that same evening, surrounded by women passing razors over their body, leaving their skin smooth and hair-free. It seemed to me unquestionable that it looked better. But when had it become better? Who had first been struck by the notion that skin would be more attractive if it was shaved? Who had been the first woman to shave? How had other people around them been convinced by their logic and begun shaving themselves? Why had I, born such a long time after them, come to think the same? Why, in the twenty-first century, did I have to fork out huge sums of money to go to the hair removal clinic? Removing hair was the sort of thing you would think could be done painlessly, in an instant, what with all our amazing twenty-first century technology.

  Whenever the plastic washbasins and chairs scraped along the floor, they produced comic squeals that echoed through the big room. Around me I could see women with smooth, hairless skin; women who had not shaved in a while; and old women who didn’t seem to care about the little hair that was still left on their bodies. Why was hair such an inescapable concern for us? Suddenly fearing that all this scrutinising of other people’s hair was going to turn me into some kind of pervert, I picked up the shower handle and began energetically massaging shampoo into my head of wet hair to divert my own attention.

  On that hateful day that he dumped me, I had forgotten to shave. As soon as I realised, I began worrying about whether he’d notice, debating whether or not I’d get away with it, cursing the fact that I’d worn short sleeves, obsessing over the few odd hairs scattered across my arms, trying to remember how long the hairs on my knuckles were and casually checking to see – and that was what I’d been doing when he mumbled something from across the table, something I couldn’t hear because he was speaking so quietly and because my mind had been wholly occupied with thoughts of my hair. I just said, ‘What?’, and then the next thing I knew he was apologising to me.

  On the train back home later that day, I found my eyes rooted to one of the myriad adverts for hair removal clinics in front of me, although I’d never before even given them so much as a passing glance. The advert showed a picture of a beautiful woman with a broad smile on her face, and smooth legs extending from beneath her shorts. Long, pale, iridescent legs – now that I think about it, they were just like white snakes. The more I stared at that advert, the more it became obvious: the horrible thing that had just happened had happened because I wasn’t depilated. It had happened because my arms, my legs and other parts of my body were not perfectly hairless – because I was an unkempt person who went about life as if there was nothing wrong with being hairy. That was why I had been dumped and cheated on, because the whole time, it turned out, he had been comparing the state of my hairy body with hers, and had chosen between us accordingly. Those kinds of thoughts had flooded into my head with tremendous momentum, one after the other, and before I knew it, my desire to be free of the problem of hair seemed overpowering. I didn’t want to have to think about it any more. In that moment, as all my strength drained out of me, I dreamed only of total hairlessness.

  Rinsing the shampoo out of my hair now, I wondered why my aunt had come along and denied me that kind of freedom? I was sick of hair, utterly sick. Going around thinking about it constantly was a damn hassle. If I smartened myself up, made my skin hairless and smooth, then I was sure to meet a wonderful new man. Why did my aunt have to come and pour cold water all over my lovely, optimistic thoughts?

  As I waited for the conditioner to sink in, I inspected my arms one at a time, both hair-free as a result of today’s treatment. You see, Auntie? See how good they look? All smooth! Not a hair in sight! As I stroked each arm in turn, I felt the tears run down my cheeks. I hurriedly turned the shower on my face to conceal them.

  The thing was, my aunt was absolutely right, and I knew it. Being hairless didn’t get you anywhere. It didn’t change a single thing. What an idiot I’d been! All those stupid, selfish things he’d come out with, like how his feelings for the other woman had ‘grown’. Had he been gauging his feelings with a measuring tape or something? And what did I go and say in response? ‘Well, I guess these things happen.’ What a weed! At the very least I should have got angry. If I’d just thought about it, I’d have seen that everything he was saying was a load of shit, but instead I just bore it as best I could. And why? Why? Had I been brainwashed or what?

  One after another, the little boxes where my memories had been stored had their lids flipped open, and the memories came together to form a black, hazy mass.

  I’m coming, the black mass told me, as it swelled larger and larger. I opened more boxes. I kept on opening them, but there were always more. Still more. I groped around blindly, feeling every last one. I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m on my way, the black mass kept telling me. Not many left to go now, I had nearly unearthed them all. I could hear the blackness clamouring, the blackness I knew to be the accumulation of all the sadness and rage and frustration and emptiness and idiocy I’d been storing up inside my body. Just three left to go, no, four, now three, two, and this, this is the last box right here. I’m coming, announced the mass, right underneath my skin, so close that its voice struck me right between the shoulders, I’m coming, and then the black force overtook me, propelling itself out of my body.

  Feeling a strange sensation beneath my palms, I opened my eyes and looked down. My thighs were black. Through the steam on the surface of the mirror opposite me, I could make out something that looked like a black demon. I touched my face. It felt no different from the hair on my head. My limbs, my torso, every single part of my body was covered with hair, from head to toe. Glossy, pitch-black hair, not a single split end or damaged strand. There was no trace left of my perm, either.

  Before I knew it, I was standing with my arms stretched out in front of me, staring at myself in rapture. To know that all along my body had contained hair this strong, this black, this magnificent was an amazing thing – I was an amazing thing!

  Glancing around, I discovered that the women in the bathhouse were staring at me with a mixture of alarm and curiosity. And with good reason: it must have seemed to them like a hairy monster of unknown origin had materialised out of nowhere.

  Uh-oh, I thought. I stood up quickly and ran to the door. The stool I’d been sitting on clattered onto its side behind me. In the changing room, as the women around me screamed and whimpered, I retrieved my bag from my locker as casually as I could. I left the bathhouse quietly and turned down a deserted shopping street, running as fast as my legs would carry me. My steady pace and the night breeze worked together like a hairdryer, draining the moisture from the hair that covered my body. It felt good. Really good.

  When I got back to my flat, I stood in front of my full-length mirror, staring at the mystery creature in front of me: neither bear nor ape, but some other being entirely, covered head to toe in glossy, slightly damp hair. The hair looked a bit like that of Sadako from The Ring, although it was only about half the length of hers. Actually, when I thought about it, I came to the realisation that Sadako was a pretty impressive character. Not only could she emerge from wells – she could also come out of the TV set. Now that was a special trick! And the same went for Okiku, Oiwa, and all the other famous ghosts I could think of. They all deserved credit. The ability to appear as a ghost was proof of an iron will.

  Suddenly, I noticed something terrible that startled me out of my reverie. On both my arms, just where I’d had the permanent hair removal done, was a patch of hair much thinner than the rest and clearly much weaker. In terms of strength, shine, body – it was inferior in every way. What had I gone and done?

  Another anxious thought followed close on its heels. Transforming into a monster was all very well, but what on earth was I supposed to do now?

  —

  My programme of hair-fortification began the following morning.

  I have started eating as much liver and seaweed as I can. Beans an
d eggs are supposed to be good, too. As I massage horse oil over the damaged patches on my arms, I repeatedly apologise to the follicles. Naturally, I apply the oil to other parts of my body, too.

  Now that I’ve developed an understanding with the black mass inside me, I can retract it at will, so it doesn’t interfere with my work. Just like my colleagues who spend their free time taking courses or pursuing various leisure activities, I pour my energy into fostering the power of my hair.

  Every day before bed, I transform in order to assess how my hair is coming along. Then I brush it thoroughly, using a luxury boar bristle brush. I don’t know how much of it is the work of the horse oil, but the weak patches on my arms are now almost indistinguishable from the rest of me, so I’ve started pondering what my next move should be. I haven’t reached any conclusions.

  I’m going to keep mulling it over until I land on a way to put my hair to good use – until I can devise my own unique trick. In the meantime, I intend to keep taking good care of it. That way, when the opportunity arises for me to unleash my power in a dramatic fashion like Kiyohime, I’ll be able to rise to the occasion. Kiyohime was free of hair and I am full of it, but I think our ambitions are the same. I want a skill, a special power into which I can throw my whole self. As to the question of what kind of creature I am, I really couldn’t care less. It doesn’t bother me if I stay a nameless monster.

  My aunt hasn’t shown up to see me yet, so I guess she hasn’t managed to perfect her special trick. I’m sure that whatever she comes up with will be unspeakably brilliant. I really hope she comes back soon. Till then, I’ll keep working on myself, always holding at the forefront of my mind the image of my aunt and myself, dancing together, kimonos twinkling.

  My Superpower

  Oiwa is the star of arguably the most famous Japanese ghost story of all time, Yotsuya Kaidan. When the family of Oiwa’s suitor, Iemon, decide that he should marry someone else, they send her face cream laced with poison to disfigure her. Repulsed by Oiwa’s transformed countenance, Iemon asks his brother Takuetsu to rape her to give him grounds for divorce; not having the heart to do so, Takuetsu instead shows Oiwa her reflection. Oiwa flies into a rage, slips and accidentally falls on her sword, later returning as a vengeful ghost. Okon, meanwhile, is an ex-geisha from another ghostly tale. She becomes friendly with the gambler Jirokichi, and the two marry, although Jirokichi’s dissolute lifestyle means they never have two pennies to rub together. After a while, Okon develops a pimple on her face, which worsens into a terrible disease. Jirokichi leaves to raise the money for her treatment, promising to return within ten days. He comes back on the eleventh day to find his wife gone. It is much later, when he has married another woman, that Okon returns to pay him a visit.

  Questions with Kumiko

  No. 9: So, What’s Your Superpower?

  I’ll begin by pointing out what Okon and Oiwa have in common: both their faces swelled up something terrible. As you are doubtless aware, both women became disfigured – one from being poisoned, the other through disease. Both subsequently became ghosts, avenging those who had brought about their ruin.

  Since childhood, I’ve observed the way both Okon and Oiwa are portrayed on TV and in films as terrifying monsters. That’s the form people expect them to take. Ultimately, that’s just the way that the horror genre works, whatever world you’re living in. It’s no fun if zombies don’t rise up from the dead, if Carrie isn’t drenched in pig’s blood. Walls need to be splashed and plates need to be smashed. Without all that violence and gore, viewers simply switch off.

  But the thing is, I never thought of Okon and Oiwa as terrifying monsters. If they were terrifying, so was I. If they were monsters, that meant I was a monster too. I knew that much instinctively.

  I’m of an allergic disposition – I have extremely sensitive skin, and I’ve suffered with eczema more or less from birth. It’s calmed down a lot now, but it was particularly bad during my teenage years. My mother, naturally concerned about me, took me to various dermatologists and other specialists. The blood tests showed that I was allergic to basically everything they tested me for, including rice, wheat, eggs, dairy, meat and sugar, and so, I was put on a special diet. I ate mostly different varieties of millet – ‘just like a little bird’, as my mother used to say. These days, whenever I order couscous in a restaurant, I recall those millet days and feel strangely nostalgic. Needless to say, I couldn’t eat any of the sweets sold in shops. That was tough, because as a child nothing on earth seemed more appealing. Watching other children devour saccharine treats on the way back from school, I’d chew my fingers in envy.

  When I was in high school, I stayed two weeks at a hospital in Kochi Prefecture that had an excellent reputation for curing skin problems. Post-treatment, covered from head to toe in bandages, I had a taste of what it feels like to be a mummy. I can look back and laugh about it now, but at the time it was awful. Two or three years back, I happened to tell this story to an editor friend of mine and learned that she too had attended the same clinic as a teenager. We both marvelled at the amazing coincidence, joked about being ‘mummy buddies’, but the editor confided in me that it had been an agonising time for her as well.

  You might be thinking that compared to all the life-threatening illnesses out there, eczema is hardly a cause for complaint. Take it from me, though – it’s excruciating.

  Eczema means living with a constant sense of physical discomfort. It’s very restricting when it comes to clothes, too, because you have to avoid any kind of synthetic fabric. At the school I went to, both the regular uniform and the sports kit were made of polyester, so my mother spoke to the teachers and I got a special dispensation to wear a cotton blouse and PE kit made from natural fibres. And although this is unrelated to the topic at hand, I can’t help but mention how I have never forgiven the Japanese education system for forcing me to exercise in gym knickers. What shameful memories! But that’s a subject for another day.

  Women with eczema also need to be really careful with the make-up they choose. I’m happy to say that these days there’s quite a range of organic cosmetics and skin products out there for those with sensitive skin, not to mention lots of lovely clothes made from skin-loving fabrics like organic cotton and linen. I must admit that my career as a lifestyle essayist has definitely benefitted from catching on to this trend and pursuing it.

  The hardest thing about eczema, acne and other skin disorders is that that you’re always conscious of other people looking at you. People react instinctively to those who are different in some way. When my eczema was very bad, my classmates’ eyes would inform me that I was a monster. That was why seeing Oiwa’s and Okon’s swollen faces on TV always made me sad. What had they done to deserve such a fate? Why did they have to be treated as monsters? In their plight I saw my own, and I pitied them.

  The thing about allergies is they generally come in waves, going through good and bad phases, and that was definitely true of mine. At high school, this gave rise to a strange phenomenon. When my eczema flared up, none of the boys showed one iota of interest in me, but when my symptoms calmed down, I’d suddenly start being attractive to the opposite sex. I hadn’t changed a bit on the inside, but when my eczema worsened the wave of boys would ebb, and when it got better, the tide would rush in. The numbers of girls who would talk to me traced a similar kind of graph. The whole thing felt totally absurd.

  My eczema has given me a keen observational eye. It has enabled me to see what the person I am talking to is really like underneath. Those who see others as monsters don’t notice that those monsters are looking back at them in turn. When judging themselves superior, people are largely insensitive to the fact that they too are being judged. My observational eye serves me very well in my current job as an essayist. No doubt about it – it’s my superpower.

  Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m suddenly bringing up superpowers – and what exactly is a superpower, anyway?
I should note at this point that I’m a diehard French cinema fan (my all-time idols are Jane Birkin and Catherine Deneuve), but recently, in something of a departure from my usual habits, I went to see The Avengers at the cinema. My fourteen-year-old son (familiar to regular readers of this column) was desperate to go. Watching him as he stood there, self-assured and suave, with a bucket of caramel-coated popcorn in one hand and a Coke in the other, I was struck by how much he’s grown. That said, once the film finished he was pestering me to buy him various bits of Avengers merchandise from the shop, so I guess he’s still got some way to go!

  Anyway, the film features various heroes with different superpowers, one of them played by Scarlett Johansson. And as I sat there watching them perform their many jaw-dropping stunts on screen, I started pondering what my own superpower was. Of course, I’m fully aware of how ridiculous it is to think about such things at my age. And yet, my dear readers, that was how I arrived at this tiny revelation. As it happens, I’m pretty content with my allotted superpower!

  I’m aware that I’ve shown you a slightly different side of myself in this month’s column, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit self-conscious about it. Now, I’m really curious to hear what all your superpowers are! Don’t be sheepish!

  Drop me a line and let me know.

  Until next month,

  Watanabe Kumiko