The world is not an easy place, and being alive is difficult. Being dead, though…is also difficult. And being human is particularly a challenge! Though, being something other than human…is also a challenge. Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda wants you to know that existence for all beings—including ghosts, humans, kitsune, and even an oddly-shaped tree—is full of struggle, and that female beings face particular challenges. However, she also wants you to know that the world, which is so much richer and stranger than you can perceive at first glance, is also full of things working themselves out. This gently delightful collection of stories provides new twists on old stories and maintains a much-needed tone of optimism and resilience throughout.
Though it’s found at the end of the book, I would suggest reading the Inspiration for the Stories section at the back before embarking on these tales. The explanations are brief and give a lot of context if you’re not familiar with Japanese myths. Even if you are, there are helpful tidbits and some less popular stories to give more weight to the modern tales. I’d also note that these aren’t ghost stories, per se. They’re yokai stories.
Yokai include ghosts, demons, and other supernatural entities. It’s often translated as “monster.” Older translations sometimes substitute “fairy” for yokai, which is culturally inaccurate, but has some useful parallels. Unlike “monster,” which has a distinctly negative connotation, yokai and fairies are far more ambiguous. They can be dangerous, but also mischievous, helpful, or entirely disinterested; they run the gamut from foolish to clever; and most of all, they have a society. They don’t want to eat us; they want to interact with us. That’s key to understanding this book in particular.
It’s also worth noting that the term yokai (妖怪) contains the character for woman (女). The combination 妖 means “disaster” but also “attractive.” It’s important that English speakers not give Japanese characters mystical or exoticised importance, but as with gendered nouns from Germanic or Romance language, we can definitely infer that there are some gendered things going on here. If nothing else, it’s clearly Matsuda’s starting point: women’s changing roles, expectations placed on women, how men interact with women, and how women interact with each other are all themes running through the stories.
But enough etymology! Matsuda starts Where the Wild Ladies Are off strong start with a tale of hair. Yes, hair. Even such an unassuming topic is fertile ground for discussion. After all, men can go bald with few social repercussions; women, on the other hand, are simply not allowed. Hair must be on the head, fashionable and well-kept, and removed from every other part of the body. The narrator of “Smartening Up” is indulging in the time-honoured tradition of changing her hair to mark her breakup. And, like most women, she sees this as an opportunity for empowerment and change, not just obligation and oppression. But thanks to the interference of a pestering ghost, her hair care goes much further than expected. Matsuda pushes the dichotomy of oppression vs. empowerment and shows us how it’s not just either/or. There’s fertile ground for all sorts of strange and wonderful things in this land where wild ladies flourish.
The narrator in “Quite a Catch” has also had a breakup, but her outlook is more cheerful from the get-go. Not only was she the one who ended it with her boyfriend, she also has a new love in her life—her ghost girlfriend. This story is so tender and swoon-worthy that I read it twice in succession. It was also the story that helped me realise that this book was not at all what I was expecting. Where the Wild Ladies Are isn’t about quick scares or disturbing the reader. Sure, you might be a bit unnerved by skeletons or apparitions, but that’s not their fault. Why is it all about you, after all? They have their own stuff going on!
The two ladies in “The Peony Lanterns” just want to sell you their high-quality lanterns. The whole group of workers in “Team Sarashina” want to do their best work, as do the odd menage a trois in “Having a Blast.” Human or yokai, alive or dead, those who exist want to feel useful. They want to accomplish things, and feel, if not joy, then at least satisfaction.
But the modern world doesn’t make that easy. When modernity overtakes everything, what do the ghosts do? They’re quite literally the avatars of the past. What place do they have when place itself is so unstable, proud castles turned to tourist attractions and “old” now meaning “a few decades” instead of “a few centuries”? Matsuda most obviously addresses this in “A New Recruit,” in which a ghost is losing her haunting-ground to a renovation. She’s offered a new gig by a strange company run by an even stranger man, the mysterious Mr. Tei.
Mr. Tei is a Japanese man of Chinese descent. His name means that humans assume he is a foreigner; his humanity means that yokai assume he can’t perceive them. But Mr. Tei straddles many borders, showing us the mutability of categories like “foreign.” Are yokai foreigners too, behaving against custom and common sense? Or are they essentially Japanese, and is it humans who have forgotten how to act? It’s another case of both/and for Matsuda, who draws further parallels with questions about gender and society. Are women are the first foreigners, still trying to navigate a society built first for and by men? Adapting is a kind of magic, as in “A Fox’s Life,” but so is staunch resistance, as in “A Day Off.” There’s not judgment here; instead, there’s possibility. The possibility of a satisfying life, and also the possibility of connection. Living by one’s own rules can be lonely, but these yokai and humans forge connections as well as paths forward.
Mr. Tei, his associates, and his company tie together the disparate stories, providing a place of meeting rather than alienation. The links between the tales are not meant to unveil any kind of grand mystery. They’re mostly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it asides that gently suggest how very connected we all are: to each other, and to the world of spirits. As certain characters pop up repeatedly, we see the suggestions of progress. A grieving young man mentioned in the first story takes on new responsibility and eventually inspires a sense of purpose in others by the last tale. A woman with low self-esteem gradually finds herself. The list goes on, not in any greatly revolutionary way, just in the way that life (and un-life) does: gradually, with a little help, and a little hope.
Where The Wild Ladies Are is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of October 20th 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
In this witty and exuberant collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales, humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services–from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime.
A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits and cleans while a single mother is out working. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women–who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive “feminine” passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents and recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company.
In this witty and exuberant collection of linked stories, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales–shapeshifting wives and foxes, magical trees and wells–and wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, and transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them.
