Ready for some wild retellings of Japanese ghost stories? Foxes, a candle-making company, ghosts who disapprove of body hair removal . . . Aoko Matsuda re-imagines the original stories with a feminist slant that is both thought-provoking and fun. Sound intriguing? Read on for more.

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda book cover

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

Genre: Short story collection/Japanese folk tales

Publication: Soft Skull Press, October 20, 2020

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.

Witty, inventive, and profound, Where the Wild Ladies Are is a contemporary feminist retelling of traditional ghost stories by one of Japan’s most exciting writers.

In a company run by the mysterious Mr Tei, strange things are afoot – incense sticks lead to a surprise encounter; a young man reflects on his mother’s death; a foxlike woman finally finds her true calling. As female ghosts appear in unexpected guises, their gently humorous encounters with unsuspecting humans lead to deeper questions about emancipation and recent changes in Japanese women’s lives. (blurb from Goodreads)

My thoughts

For starters, I know almost nothing about Japanese folk tales and had never read anything by Aoko Matsuda. I wasn’t certain what to expect from this short story collection, but all the rave reviews made me curious. It was a pleasure to read this book!

The short stories are just the right length to read over a coffee break. I read the book in small doses, one or two each evening for a few days. That way I got the full impact of each story as an individual work of art.

Yet taken as a whole book, there’s an interesting structure to the collection, too. The characters are linked through a strange company run by the even-stranger Mr Tei, though it’s not always apparent how the individual stories relate until later stories. Matsuda’s inventiveness is astounding, especially when I compared her stories to the original tales. (Those are included at the end of the book.)

Feminist retellings

Certain aspects of the stories are unique to Japanese culture: the myths, for example, aren’t ones that I was familiar with. But Matsuda’s insights into humans and women’s societal roles are universal. A lot of her observations hit home for me as a female. Her characters show how subtly and unconsciously societal ideas worm their way into our minds and shape our sense of self-worth.

If all of this sounds like feminist theory, it is. But don’t worry: Aoko Matsuda’s stories are anything but dry academic theory. They are lively, witty, and odd in the best possible way.

Pushy saleswomen ghosts.

Guilt-tripping ghosts.

Babysitting ghosts. (Where were you when my kids were little?!)

Fox ghosts . . .

The list goes on. The characters–the live humans, not the dead ones!–benefit from the sometimes counter-intuitive motivation of the ghosts. Whether it’s pushy sales tactics or guilt trips, the human protagonists need these ghosts to push them into action or to protect them.

Occasionally the stories don’t come to the conclusions or resolutions that I expected. As a novel reader, I like all story threads tied, all loose ends snipped, and the story washed, pressed, and neatly hung up in the closet. But short stories–and folk tales in particular–tend to be more unruly than that. And Matsuda’s stories do resolve in the ways most fitting for their characters. There’s a sense of life beyond this story.

One favorite thing . . .

The first story might be my favorite. A pushy guilt-tripping dead aunt returns to scold her niece for her devotion to hair removal. Plucking, waxing, electrolysis, you name it, the niece believes that hairlessness increases her romantically desirability. Yet it hasn’t. The aunt’s witty, sarcastic, and unnervingly honest opinions and the niece’s response (and the ultimate outcome of the story) made me laugh and look at my own razor in a different way.

Overall, do I recommend this book? Absolutely. It was a delight. Anyone who enjoys folk tale retellings, inventive and unusual stories, or feminist stories will enjoy this. I will be looking for more work by Aoko Matsuda.

I received a complimentary copy of this book, thanks to Soft Skull Press and Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.