"Feminine" Passions: On Aoko Matsuda's "Where the Wild Ladies Are"
Aoko Matsuda, transl. Polly Barton | Where the Wild Ladies Are | Soft Skull Press | 2020 | 288 pages
Before bedtime, in their two-room apartment on the outskirts of postwar Tokyo, my great-grandfather would tell my obāchan and her siblings ghost stories, like those retold in Aoko Matsuda’s short story collection, Where the Wild Ladies Are. A woman who transforms into a fire-breathing serpent, a rōnin who becomes possessed by a former lover, a samurai who throws his servant down a well to her death. These stories would scare my obāchan so much that she’d be afraid to go to the bathroom by herself. And when she got older and her family was able to purchase a small black-and-white TV, she watched screen adaptations of the folktales over and over.
I asked my obāchan if she ever thought these stories mistreated women. No, she said. That had never occurred to her. But, considering her life story—one of sacrifice and smothered passions—I wondered if these stories might have impacted her more than she knew. As the second-eldest daughter of a working-class family of nine, my obāchan cared for her younger siblings and did much of the cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping. Then, in her early twenties, she met an American sailor—my grandfather—got pregnant, and immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, where she raised three children. Throughout her life, she has almost always done what was expected of her as a sister, daughter, mother, and grandmother.
It should be no surprise then that she developed a few of what Aoko Matsuda may consider “obsessions.” As a young mother, my obāchan became very passionate about bargain shopping because it was one of the only times she left the house. My family jokes that she uses so many coupons the cashier will owe her money. She also loves cooking, especially sashimi, and purchases whole salmon from the Faroe Islands and filets them herself.
“Japanese women have a peculiar capacity for obsession,” Matsuda writes in “Silently Burning,” a story about women who go to Oshichi’s temple to pray for luck in love. By this Matsuda means that Japanese society smothers female passion until it reemerges stronger, bordering on obsession, but remains an unknown source of power. “[Women] consistently underestimate their abilities,” she writes. “Even with the knowledge of their full capabilities, they still fail to value themselves.”
Where the Wild Ladies Are is a collection of 17 loosely connected modern feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales. The collection succeeds in giving the reader a fun, light-hearted slice of modern Japanese life, which is rife with consumerism, capitalism, and tensions between Westernization and traditional culture. However, when it comes to character growth, creativity, universal themes, and the empowerment of women, the collection falls short.
In an interview with Asymptote, Matsuda said that as an adult she realized how old folktales “reflected and encouraged people to internalize misogynistic views.” In writing Where the Wild Ladies Are, she wanted to “create a space where all the female ghosts can enjoy themselves and find new lives.” Ultimately, many of Matsuda’s ghosts do end up finding new lives, but as I read, I wondered if they had found better lives. Did they find lives that were empowering, freeing and fulfilling?
None of the women found lives that escaped the confines of the patriarchal capitalist system. They all end up working for a man named Mr. Tei, who runs a company of ghosts in the afterlife. This company recruits women—some dead, some alive—who have special “talents” and “powers,” such as jealous rage, vengeance, and obsession. As the publisher’s blurb reads, “This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive ‘feminine’ passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated.” These “feminine” passions then energize the ghosts to fight for gender equality in the world by doing things like intimidating sexual predators and babysitting the children of single mothers.
For a book that advertises itself as feminist, I thought it was a curious choice to cast a man as the boss of the company. I also wondered if it is indeed feminist to encourage and reinforce such negative stereotypes about women. Instead of arguing that women aren’t any more jealous, vengeful, obsessive, or stubborn than men, Matsuda portrays these stereotypes as empowering:
In today’s world, there’s a tendency for jealousy and obsession to be portrayed in a negative light. Those with talents in these areas are often criticized, as if they were lacking in some way. This only serves to ensure that people with extraordinary talent … shrink in number. This is the vicious cycle we find ourselves in. The situation is truly grave.
Instead of transcending these stereotypical “excessive feminine passions,” the women in Matusda’s stories become entirely consumed by them, which, to me, sounds like the opposite of freedom and empowerment. Rather than taming your vices, Matsuda says to indulge in them and let them control you. On top of this, some of the nuances in her stories are quite unfeminist. In “A Fox’s Life,” for example, it is presumed that a girl can only outperform her male peers in school if she is secretly a fox, and thus has strong “mental agility.” Matsuda writes that each time the protagonist, who is a fox, “performed well in a test” and saw her name at the top of the results list, above all the boys’, she became uncomfortable.
In the first story, “Smartening Up,” we meet an insecure woman who is obsessed with hair removal after being dumped by her boyfriend. She is convinced he broke up with her because she forgot to shave her legs one day and was, therefore, “an unkempt person who went about life as if there was nothing wrong with being hairy.” She tries to heal herself with Fabio Rusconi heels; elegant, minimalist, western-style furniture; Dean & DeLuca deli items; and vanilla cookies. Unsurprisingly, such consumerist comforts do not ultimately fulfill her: “I stuffed a cookie into my mouth. It was delicious, but I felt that the taste was a bit too delicate in some way, the perfume of vanilla too faint.”
The unnamed narrator is daydreaming about being blonde in her next life when her recently deceased aunt—who hanged herself after her long-term boyfriend ended their relationship—appears at the door. The aunt tells her niece that she is developing a “special skill” to get revenge on her boyfriend and “scar him for life.” The aunt wishes that instead of hanging herself, she would’ve placed a “deadly curse” on her own boyfriend. She said she would’ve “had every right” to do so because “it was what he deserved.” To me, this sounds like bitterness, not female empowerment or self-betterment. Rather than letting go of that toxic relationship the aunt spends her “new life” obsessing over her ex.
The aunt also implores the protagonist to stop removing her hair because by doing so she strips herself of her power. “Your hair is the only wild thing you have left,” she says. “The one precious crop of wildness remaining to you.” This confrontation leads to our heroine’s transformation. Her entire body instantaneously becomes covered in thick, dark hair. “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!”
The protagonist massages horse oil over the damaged parts on her arms and begins eating as much liver and seaweed as she can. This diet change from cookies to protein deftly symbolizes the protagonist’s rejection of frilly, unsatisfying, expensive Western consumerism and acceptance of heartier, traditional Japanese foods and ancient tales, like that of the fire-breathing serpent Kiyohime in The Maid of Dōjō Temple. In this way, Matsuda’s story brilliantly challenges Eurocentric beauty standards while also exploring the tensions between western capitalism and traditional Japanese culture.
Upon closer examination, however, the resolution of “Smartening Up” is not empowering for women. Will this reversal—this flip from an obsession with removing her hair to an obsession with fortifying her hair—actually free the protagonist? Doesn’t the obsession to fortify one’s hair still stem from an unhealthy fixation with appearance and superficiality? Wouldn’t it be better for the protagonist if she simply stopped dwelling on her body hair?
The solution to patriarchy is not the inverse of matriarchy—in which women would hypothetically horde power and subjugate men—but rather, the cultivation of an egalitarian society. Similarly, the solution to the protagonist’s insecurity, meekness, and adherence to beauty standards is not to swing to the other extreme and become a hairy, vengeful monster hell-bent on getting revenge on her ex, but rather to let go and move on. Matsuda says that, as women, bitterness is all we have. Bitterness is our “special power.”
In another story, “The Jealous Type,” which is written as a recruitment letter from Mr. Tei, the protagonist is the “possessive type.” She is obsessed with throwing things—pillows, slippers, books, photo frames, curtains, dishes—at her husband: “You throw and you pitch and you chuck. You smash things to bits … Sometimes they cut your arms and your legs, but what does that matter? You don’t pay heed to such things, choosing to focus single-mindedly on your destructive activities.”
In a feat of mental gymnastics, Matsuda argues that these fits of jealousy allow the protagonist to thrive and “assume a look of positive radiance.” At first I thought this story might be meant to be read ironically, but I could find no hints to support that. As translator Polly Barton pointed out in a Literary Hub article, Matsuda is “offering these ghosts compassion, and, ultimately, redemption,” which means that she is genuinely defending the actions of this jealous woman. I, however, don’t see any redemption in indulging in irrational jealousy. Maybe in the short-term, one feels validated to give in to such negative emotions, but they will most certainly catch up to you, like how, in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, King Leontes’s irrational jealousy leads to the death of his son, loss of his daughter, and imprisonment of his wife. Only when he repents does peace return to the kingdom.
Later in the story, it is also revealed that the protagonist allowed jealousy to control her entire life. In grade school, she “cast endless love spells” and “was never without a stack of voodoo dolls.” She stood naked under a waterfall and prayed the boy she loved would break up with his girlfriend. In middle school, she placed curses on the girls that talked to her crush, and in university, when her boyfriend didn’t text her back for five hours, she came down with a fever. Her entire life has been consumed by jealousy and a dependence on men for validation. This suggests that her husband is not to blame for her behavior. Her jealousy stems from deep-seated insecurity and lack of self-esteem. But instead of confronting and growing beyond her insecurities, she indulges in them. Matsuda says, why let go of your jealous rage, reconcile with your husband, and find peace, when you can continue hurling objects at him well into the afterlife?
Ultimately, Matsuda’s stories were written out of spite, which as Virginia Woolf pointed out in A Room of One’s Own, is never conducive to true art: “It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was tuned to nature and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness.” Woolf argued that the mind of an artist must “consume all impediments and become incandescent” in order to write lasting stories.
My grandfather ended up leaving my obāchan for her for her best friend, which caused her to move back to Japan and resent him for a few years. If her life were a story in Matsuda’s collection, she would have fed this anger, sought revenge and become a ghost, but, instead, she forgave him, and now they are friends, living together as roommates and playing board games every day. “I had to let go of those negative emotions,” my obāchan said. “Or else they would’ve made me sick.”
Maybe, though, I am being too harsh. In a later story, it is revealed that the protagonist from “Smartening Up” has grown. Her cousin says, “Previously she’d lacked confidence and was forever putting out feelers to the people around her to gauge what they were thinking, but these days she gave out an almost authoritative aura, as if to signal that she couldn’t care less what other people made of her. It was like she’d become invincible.” Maybe transformation is a slow, long process and Matsuda is choosing to showcase the first step, which is a catharsis of negativity that will ultimately lead to self-confidence. Or maybe, as Polly Barton points out, Matsuda thinks that it’s not women who should have to grow or change, but the system. Barton writes, “The solutions that [Matsuda’s] fiction envisages are not in the realm of characters who accustom themselves to difficult situations through psychological growth or suitable choices. Matsuda wants systemic change, and the feats of the imagination she conjures up should not be read purely as escapist fantasy but also a kind of training in grasping towards a better world.”
Another story, “Having a Blast,” shows a woman moving on from a relationship and embracing her individuality during her afterlife:
While I was alive, the idea that my husband would remarry after my death left me devastated and distraught, but as soon as I actually died, I stopped caring. It was as if whatever fear or anxiety had been possessing me had slipped right out of my body. People assume that ghosts must be up to their eyes in resentment and all, but that’s a misperception. I feel as if I had a lot more grudges when I was alive than I do now.
The woman enjoys her shaved head and punk aesthetic, sneaks into movie theaters and steals sips of Coke, and walks through the corridors of the ghost company humming to music on her huge headphones. Her former husband sees her and says that “the postmortem version of her seems more full of life than the living one ever did.”
Although “Having a Blast” shows a woman moving on, it is very inconsistent with the premise of the earlier stories, like “The Jealous Type,” in which Mr. Tei writes that “without the requisite degree of jealousy or obsession, people just float straight to heaven.” If this punk ghost let go of her jealousy, why is she still working for the company? What “talent” does she have to offer them? In addition, the story suggests that, for women, freedom and empowerment are only achievable in the afterlife. “The living have this great limitation placed on them by the fact they could kick the bucket at any time,” Matsuda writes. “Having a mortal body is really restrictive. What’s more, you’ve got society to deal with, which restricts you even further.”
Where the Wild Ladies Are is ultimately a bit like the fine vanilla cookies that our first protagonist stuffed into her mouth—bingeable, fun, and delicious, but too delicate to have lasting fulfillment. This is because Matsuda’s collection feels less like stories that touch on the human condition, and more like platforms from which she can express her opinions. Transparent and didactic stories like hers are never successful in the long-term because, as Woolf wrote, “All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world witness of some hardship or grievance” disturbs and impedes the natural flow of poetry.
Take the story “Enoki” for example. It’s told from the perspective of a tree famous in Japan for burrs that resemble breasts, and resin that’s seen as milk. Such a unique perspective could make for a fascinating story, but that potential was lost when the story devolves into a bizarre tirade against breastfeeding and an exalted praise of baby formula: “She feels awful for women who lived back then, before formula milk existed. Of course, nowadays, with the humans’ deep-rooted devotion to the religion of breastfeeding, women still suffer a lot, but the invention of formula must have improved things.”
“Enoki” reads like something from an opinion column. There is no plot or action, just a few pages of conversational critique on human perceptions of nature, a quick rehash of a folktale about a woman who was raped and couldn’t produce breastmilk, and some thoughts on the power of baby formula to help women. “Enoki”' made me wonder if Matsuda may have been better off writing a collection of witty essays that reflected upon the original ghost stories. In this way, she could have expressed her opinions on the original folktales without writing didactic, transparent stories that scream their message loud and clear. Matsuda seems to prefer telling instead of showing, which is perhaps better suited to the essay form.
Matsuda’s stories, although timely, are underdeveloped and stagnant. They read more like vignettes or even blog posts. Most of them are just premises without any action. “Retelling” might not even be the best description for them either because most of the stories only use a shred of the original—sometimes just a name. It’s as if she took the original folktale, flipped the genders of the villains and heroes, and added markers of modernity—brand names, bureaucracy, and the internet.
Nonetheless, Where the Wild Ladies Are helped me to conceptualize shopping, cooking and karaoke as my obāchan’s “powers.” A few years ago, my entire family and I went to a small karaoke bar in Cleveland. My obāchan wanted to sing an enka song—a genre of traditional Japanese music—but she assumed that the bar wouldn’t have it in their repository. I asked the DJ and he downloaded the song off YouTube for her. When her name was called to perform, she was nervous, but got up, grabbed the microphone, and sang beautifully in Japanese, “I have been walking down this long, narrow road… If I look back, far off in the distance… I can see my hometown.” The whole bar stood up and clapped when she finished. Maybe, in a place where the wild ladies are allowed to thrive and express themselves fully, my obāchan could’ve been an enka singer. Maybe, in Matsuda’s words, enka could’ve been the “special power” into which my obāchan could’ve thrown her “whole self.” Or maybe, like many of Matsuda’s characters, her “special power” would have been nothing more than bitterness, and maybe she would’ve been extremely lonely and unhappy without her ex-husband-turned-best-friend, children, and grandchildren. She did, after all, seem fulfilled when we flocked around her after karaoke and went to get ice cream to celebrate.