... ushers in a new moment for how contemporary Japanese literature represents its ghosts stories. Barton’s translation is like butter, making it all the more magical a read ... Matsuda seizes and subverts Japanese storytelling by employing female ghosts who simply refuse to behave and remain subservient to men and male desire. While this sounds overstated, it seems we cannot bark enough ... The story structures enable what seems like self-commentary, but because they are embedded in an implicit conversation with classical ghost stories, they do not feel self-conscious or 'I’m being clever.' At times the prose resembles an absurdist riff on self-help 'femininity,' taking a turn into a horror film undermining the same femininity, rendering the subject of the story a ghost altogether. The tales employ such sweet-talking sabotage of gender role expectations, let alone a ghosting' of the ghost tales on which they are premised. Matsuda, teetering between these disparities, graciously brings contemporary pop culture and classical storytelling together ... These stories are shockingly blunt, comedic, urban, contemporary, beautifully written, and relatable ... Moving into the syntax of rakugo or kabuki, the stories exist as intimate dialogues and monologues, taken not just as literary text, but as performative scripts/monologues. In this capacity, the published text has a larger context. It exceeds the page. It offers internal dialogue and direct address. It implies stylized performance. A tall order, the writing and the translation live up to it ... Matsuda, crisply current, is aware of literary and historical precedent.
From a woman empowered by her thriving hair to another who finds her mojo with the skinhead look, Matsuda entertainingly engages the breadth of feminine identity and beauty ... Peppering her short stories with references to Repetto ballerinas, Starbucks coffees, and trendy Scandinavian interiors, Matsuda attunes her traditional characters to contemporary Japan. Her heterogeneous writing style contributes to the collection’s vibrant rhythm. Ranging from a short story formatted as a magazine column to a first-person narrative from the point of view of a tree, the author decisively updates her source materials to offer a fresh critique of Japan’s stance towards women ... Physical appearance and socially prescribed beauty standards are not Matsuda’s only concerns. Her stories demonstrate how Japan’s restrictive gender roles still heavily influence the country’s women ... With this collection, Matsuda subverts the typical male-dominated workplace to look the chauvinism of contemporary Japanese society right in the eye. And her gaze is burning.
Each story in Where the Wild Ladies Are updates a traditional Japanese folk tale for our contemporary world. The result is delightfully uncanny ... Matsuda’s retellings are feminist with a vengeance ... Yet just as this brave new world allows these women to grow wild, it also castrates out-of-work men. These stories, deftly translated by Barton, touch on a recession specific to Japan, though the language of neoliberal precarity and gig work will be familiar to many.
This gently delightful collection of stories provides new twists on old stories and maintains a much-needed tone of optimism and resilience throughout ... 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.
These ghosts are not the monstrous, vengeful spirits of the original stories; they are real people with agency and personalities, finally freed from the restraints placed on living women. Funny, beautiful, surreal and relatable, this is a phenomenal book.
Where the Wild Ladies Are is an audacious book, a collection of ghost stories that's spooky, original and defiantly feminist. All of the stories in Matsuda's collection are based, loosely, on traditional Japanese stories of yōkai, ghosts and monsters that figure prominently in the country's folklore. But Matsuda puts her own clever spin on them, and each of her stories feels original and contemporary ... And what remarkable stories they are. Like the subject matter of the book, Matsuda's writing, and Polly Barton's masterful translation, seems to exist on a higher plane — the author seems to see things the rest of us can't (or won't), and writes with a subtle self-assuredness mixed with a sly, unexpected sense of humor. Where the Wild Ladies Are would make for great Halloween reading, although these aren't the same old horror stories you've encountered before — they're novel, shimmering masterworks from a writer who seems incapable of being anything less than original.
The collection’s source notes may sometimes be too brief for a non-Japanese reader ... The Jealous Type complicates an easy reading of Where the Wild Ladies Are as a feminist effort—as does the presence of a man, Shigeru, as the collection’s unifying figure. Nevertheless, Matsuda presents a radical reimagining of stories fundamental in Japanese popular culture. Women are no longer victims, no longer the objects, but the subjects of these stories. Whether made over into heroines or as villainous as they have always appeared, the women finally take center stage. For better or worse, it is what the “wild ladies” have to say that matters.
... it isn’t the ghosts or the workplace harassment that provides the jump scares in Where the Wild Ladies Are: it’s the material reminder of conformity and meaningless, textureless commodity and the erasure of the local ... While these stories — in folktale fashion — seem at first to float just above temporal specificity, Matsuda tethers them to the contemporary moment. But this temporal clarity does not come from women’s ascendence in the workplace or their ability to live independently. Rather, Matsuda punctures the folktale serenity and brings us into the now through references to the cruelties of global capitalism and western cultural hegemony.
Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (translated by Polly Barton) collects a set of linked short stories reimagining Japanese folktales in contemporary settings, shot through with exceptionally witty societal critique ... Matsuda writes these tales of spirit(ed) women and dispirited men with impeccable comedic timing and a deceptively urbane tone that also carries biting commentary, while Barton’s translation maintains the rhythm of her prose with grace. The book is described as exuberant on the back cover, and the same word kept occurring to me. Wildness is dangerous but exuberant; these monstrous ladies are the same ... Where the Wild Ladies Are is a fantastic book, and I’m holding myself off from talking endlessly about each story inside it ... Matsuda has done a stellar job of rendering her ghostly characters human and understandable, even the spookiest ones. Her human protagonists are also thoroughly relatable, whether depressed by the job market, their dating lives, or other pressures to fit in that are constricting them in their ability to desire.
Preface any storytelling format with 'traditional,' and audiences will have no expectations of feminist agency. Thankfully, prizewinning Japanese writer Matsuda imagines reclamation and brilliantly transforms fairy tales and folk legends into empowering exposés, adventures, manifestos ... adroitly translated by UK-based Polly Barton ... While each story easily entertains, there are standouts ... Matsuda enthralls with both insight and bite.
Matsuda’s approach to her source material goes beyond a direct transfer of the narrative into a modern setting: she makes use of these tales in various ways to show how people use these types of stories to make sense of our experiences in the world ... The narrative tracks Enoki’s musings on humans’ desire to affix meaning and power onto things outside of their influence out of a desire to ultimately be able to control the things they can’t ... As Barton explains, '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.' Like many fairytales and folktales, there is a sort of lesson within Where the Wild Ladies Are. But rather than offering a direct guide for change, the stories in the collection encourage us to change how we understand stories—whether that be the folktales we tell children or the larger national myths we hold on to as adults—and to see where we can break away from received narratives into new futures.
... groundbreaking ... turns traditional Japanese ghost and yōkai stories on their heads by championing wild, complex women ... Not all of Matsuda’s stories captivate. Team Sarashina is about a group of women who are assigned to various departments in their company and offer their support to flailing coworkers, but it’s too obtuse to get a handle on. Most of Matsuda’s stories, though, hit their mark, particularly her queer, feminist fables ... Matsuda’s subversive revisionist tales are consistently exciting.
... conversational in tone but not without wisdom and insight about human nature, mortality, and the ways in which family and society repress the spirit ... many of the stories connect through characters, time, and dimensions, and the way Matsuda executes these links is a highlight. The author has a light but lasting touch ... A delightful, daring collection.
