E-Book, Englisch, 284 Seiten
Matsuda Where The Wild Ladies Are
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-911284-37-6
Verlag: Tilted Axis Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 284 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-911284-37-6
Verlag: Tilted Axis Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Matsuda Aoko is the author of four collections of short stories and four essay collections. Her debut, Stackable, was nominated for Mishima Yukio Prize in 2013. English translations of her work have appeared in Granta and Monkey Business, and her novella The Girl Who Is Getting Married (tr Angus Turvill) was published by Strangers Press in 2016. Her short story The Woman Dies (tr Polly Barton) was nominated for Shirley Jackson Award in 2019. Matsuda has also translated Karen Russell and Amelia Gray into Japanese. She is based in Tokyo.
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The Peony Lanterns
The Buddhist festival of Obon is celebrated in mid-August – when it is believed the spirits of the deceased return to wander the earth – and it occupies a special place in the Japanese supernatural calendar. The tradition of telling ghost stories in summer owes much to Obon, as spooky tales were found to pack more punch when one believed one was literally sharing a room with the spirits. Perhaps there’s also some credence in the practical explanation that this tradition evolved as a way of alleviating the blistering summer heat through the chilling effect of fear on the body.
These days, whether or not they partake in the telling of ghost stories, most people use the national Obon holidays as a time to return to their hometown, clean the graves of loved ones and generally honour the spirits of their ancestors.
Besides providing an atmospheric backdrop, Obon also plays a key role in a number of ghost stories. One of Japan’s most well-known ghost stories, the tale of Otsuyu, is a perennially pertinent reminder of the dangers of having sex with ghosts. As with many classic tales, the story has many variations. The rakugo version of Botan Doro [The Peony Lantern], from which Matsuda’s version draws its inspiration, runs roughly as follows: Otsuyu meets Shinzaburo Hagiwara, a ronin or masterless samurai, and the two fall hopelessly in love, but are forbidden from being together because they come from different social classes. So deep is Otsuyu’s yearning that she eventually dies of lovesickness. Come Obon, however, Otsuyu appears at Shinzaburo’s door and the lovers enjoy a passionate reunion. Soon she is visiting him every night, bearing a peony lantern. Noticing that Shinzaburo is growing more haggard and believing him to be possessed, his tenant hangs a talisman outside the door, preventing the entry of Otsuyu’s ghost. Those passing the house at nightfall now see a lantern floating sadly around the vicinity of Shinzaburo’s house.
Eventually, though, the promise of financial compensation conspires to persuade the tenant and his wife to sell Shinzaburo’s soul. They remove the talisman, and the lantern bobs joyfully inside. The next morning, Shinzaburo’s corpse is found embracing a skeleton.
‘Good evening to you, sir!’
He’d ignored the doorbell three times already when he heard the woman’s voice carrying through the thick steel door. Sitting on his sofa, Shinzaburo froze in alarm, hardly breathing. His body felt terribly heavy, and the thought of getting up was unbearable. Usually in this situation, Shinzaburo would have relied on his wife to answer the door, but with it being Obon, she was away visiting her parents. Besides, it was ten o’clock at night. Shinzaburo had no idea who his visitor was, but he believed that ringing people’s doorbells at this hour was unreasonable behaviour – and Shinzaburo disliked people who behaved unreasonably. From a young age, he had been instilled with a firm grasp on what was and wasn’t reasonable. In his adult life, throughout his career as a salesperson, his professional conduct had always been eminently reasonable. Even when he’d been laid off as part of the company’s post-recession restructure, he had retained his sense of reason and walked away without a fuss.
That had been over six months ago. Shinzaburo’s wife had begun dropping gentle hints that he should find himself another job. He knew she was right – but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Both his mind and body felt leaden. Whenever he browsed job adverts online he was hit by the unshakeable sense that he was being made a fool of, and he couldn’t stand the idea of visiting the job centre either. Had he really become the sort of man who had to rely on a job centre? The very idea seemed too wretched to bear. And there he’d been, believing that he was talented and had something to offer to the world. He’d gone about his life not being a nuisance to anyone, playing by the rules, acting reasonably at all times. How had it come to this?
While his wife was at work, Shinzaburo would undertake a token offering of housework, but that was as far as it went. The truth of the matter was this: spending all his time in his marl-grey tracksuit, shabby from constant wear, Shinzaburo had morphed into a big grey sloth. In the afternoon, he would lounge about on the sofa, watching reruns of period dramas and mulling over questions of no particular significance, like whether, back in the Edo period, his lack of fixed employment would have made him a ronin. How much better that sounded than simply unemployed.
‘Good evening to you, sir!’
The same voice again. From the light filtering through the living room curtain, it must have been obvious to whoever was outside that there was someone at home.
‘Oh, damn it all!’
Shinzaburo got up from the sofa, slowly crept towards the door to avoid his presence being discovered – though he knew from long years of experience that such a thing was impossible – and peered through the spyhole.
Outside the gate stood two women. They were dressed in practically identical outfits: black suits, white shirts, sheer tights, and black pumps. One was somewhere between forty and fifty, and the other looked to be in her early thirties. The elder was staring with terrifying intensity at the spyhole, while the younger was shyly inspecting her feet. They made for an altogether peculiar pair. Immediately, alarm bells went off in Shinzaburo’s head. No one in their right mind would involve themselves in situations which they knew would be troublesome from the outset. In this particular period of his life, Shinzaburo did not have the mental energy to spare on that kind of nonsense.
The women seemed to immediately sense Shinzaburo’s presence in his cramped entranceway, and the elder one piped up again, ‘Good evening to you, sir!’
Shinzaburo guessed she must be the one who had done all the speaking so far. The younger one kept her head down, not moving a muscle. Something about the way she held one cheek angled towards the door suggested she was invested in what the person on the other side thought of her. Indeed, the way she carried herself was common among highly self-conscious women, thought Shinzaburo. The observational eye he had cultivated during his years as a sales representative, which enabled him to pick up on these little details about people, was a source of great pride to him.
Very cautiously, Shinzaburo opened his mouth. ‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Oh, good evening, sir,’ began the elder woman with an affected smile on her face. ‘We are door-to-door sales representatives, visiting the homes in this area in the best of faith. We are terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we were wondering if you might be able to spare us a couple of minutes of your time.’
Something about the woman’s voice filled Shinzaburo with instantaneous exhaustion. He felt nothing but loathing for these stupid women who’d invaded his precious relaxation time and forced him to walk all the way to the front door. Don’t you know that I’m exhausted? he wanted to say. For six whole months now, I’ve been totally and utterly exhausted.
‘No thanks, I’m afraid not. It’s late.’
No sooner had Shinzaburo delivered his curt answer, which he had hoped would send them packing, than the younger one, who had been examining the floor so intently, raised her head to look towards the spyhole, and said in a weak, sinuous voice, ‘Come now, don’t be so inhospitable! O–pen up!’
If a willow tree could speak, Shinzaburo thought, this is the kind of voice it would have. He blinked and found himself in the living room, the two women facing him across the coffee table. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were sat on the sofa, while Shinzaburo had been relegated to one of the more uncomfortable kitchen chairs he and his wife had bought online. He had no memory of carrying it into this room. Sandwiched beneath his buttocks was one of the Marimekko cushions his wife loved so much. Shinzaburo still had no idea what its pattern was supposed to represent, although right now that was hardly his most pressing concern.
While Shinzaburo was still wondering how on earth he had wound up here, the women sat looking at him, their four stockinged kneecaps arranged into a perfect row of iridescent silver. Seeing that they had his attention, they both pulled the same inscrutable expression and handed him business cards as white as their papery faces.
‘Allow us to introduce ourselves.’
Flummoxed by being handed two cards at exactly the same time, Shinzaburo somehow managed to accept both and examined the names printed on them. The elder woman was Mochizuki Yoneko, the younger Iijima Tsuyuko.
Just then, Shinzaburo’s eyes fell on three steaming cups of green tea placed on the coffee table. Did I go and make tea without realising it? he thought. Surely these two didn’t sneak in to the kitchen and make it themselves? What’s more, he noticed that the yokan he’d been saving for a special occasion was there too, cut into neat slices. As Shinzaburo was trying to wrap his head around all this, Yoneko spoke.
‘We took the liberty of examining the nameplate outside your door. It’s Mr Hagiwara, is that right? Oh, good. Forgive our impertinence, but may we ask your first name?’
Why did they need to know? ‘It’s Shinzaburo,’ he found himself saying, though he’d had no inclination to answer...
