Shinzaburō spotted Tsuyuko and Yoneko only once after that encounter.
He’d been on the early shift at his new workplace and was back home preparing dinner when he heard a woman’s voice outside the window. Peering through a gap in the curtain, he saw the two of them standing at the gate next to the nameplate. They appeared to be in serious conversation.
Shinzaburō remembered. It had slipped his mind entirely, but after coaxing the truth about the peony lanterns out of Shinzaburō, his wife had bought a sticker at the home goods store that read NO SALES VISITORS! and had stuck it up next to their nameplate. That had been about a year ago now. The business cards they had given him that evening many months ago had mysteriously vanished, and for some reason he couldn’t recall the name of their company, though he was sure he’d made a mental note of it.
“There’s one here, too! How cruel.”
“We can’t go in now, not with this talisman stuck up . . . What a pity!”
“It’s so heartless.”
“It really is sheer heartlessness.”
Tsuyuko and Yoneko were wearing the same outfits as before.
A talisman, indeed! Shinzaburō smirked. Such melodrama, as usual! Just what exactly was the deal with these two? And yet he couldn’t deny that he was a little bit pleased to have seen them again. The next moment, they both looked toward the window in unison and Shinzaburō lunged away from the curtain.
My Superpower
Questions with Kumiko
No. 9: So, what’s your superpower?
I’ll begin by pointing out what Okon and Oiwa have in common: both their faces swelled up something terrible. As you are doubtless aware, both women became disfigured—one from being poisoned, the other through disease. Both subsequently became ghosts, avenging those who had brought about their ruin.
Since childhood, I’ve observed the way both Okon and Oiwa are portrayed on TV and in films as terrifying monsters. That’s the form people expect them to take. Ultimately, that’s just the way that the horror genre works, whatever world you’re living in. It’s no fun if zombies don’t rise up from the dead, if Carrie isn’t drenched in pig’s blood. Walls need to be splashed and plates need to be smashed. Without all that violence and gore, viewers simply switch off.
But the thing is, 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. I knew that much instinctively.
I’m of an allergic disposition. I have extremely sensitive skin, and I’ve suffered with eczema more or less from birth. It’s calmed down a lot now, but it was particularly bad during my teenage years. My mother, naturally concerned about me, took me to various dermatologists and other specialists. The blood tests showed that I was allergic to basically everything they tested me for, including rice, wheat, eggs, dairy, meat, and sugar. And so I was put on a special diet. I ate mostly different varieties of millet—“just like a little bird,” as my mother used to say. These days, whenever I order couscous in a restaurant, I recall those millet days and feel strangely nostalgic. Needless to say, I couldn’t eat any of the sweets sold in shops. That was tough, because as a child nothing on earth seemed more appealing. Watching other children devour saccharine treats on the way back from school, I’d chew my fingers in envy.
When I was in high school, I stayed two weeks at a hospital in Kōchi Prefecture that had an excellent reputation for curing skin problems. Post-treatment, covered from head to toe in bandages, I had a taste of what it feels like to be a mummy. I can look back and laugh about it now, but at the time it was awful. Two or three years back, I happened to tell this story to an editor friend of mine and learned that she, too, had attended the same clinic as a teenager. We both marveled at the amazing coincidence, joked about being “mummy buddies,” but the editor confided in me that it had been an agonizing time for her as well.
You might be thinking that compared to all the life-threatening illnesses out there, eczema is hardly a cause for complaint. Take it from me, though—it’s excruciating.
Eczema means living with a constant sense of physical discomfort. It’s very restricting when it comes to clothes, too, because you have to avoid any kind of synthetic fabric. At the school I went to, both the regular uniform and the gym clothes were made of polyester, so my mother spoke to the teachers and I got a special dispensation to wear a cotton blouse and PE outfit made from natural fibers. And although this is unrelated to the topic at hand, I can’t help but mention how I have never forgiven the Japanese education system for forcing me to exercise in skimpy shorts. What shameful memories! But that’s a subject for another day.
Women with eczema also need to be really careful with the makeup they choose. I’m happy to say that these days there’s quite a range of organic cosmetics and skin products out there for those with sensitive skin, not to mention lots of lovely clothes made from skin-loving fabrics such as organic cotton and linen. I must admit that my career as a lifestyle essayist has definitely benefitted from catching on to this trend and pursuing it.
The hardest thing about eczema, acne, and other skin disorders is that you’re always conscious of other people looking at you. People react instinctively to those who are different in some way. When my eczema was very bad, my classmates’ eyes would inform me that I was a monster. That was why seeing Oiwa’s and Okon’s swollen faces on TV always made me sad. What had they done to deserve such a fate? Why did they have to be treated as monsters? In their plight I saw my own, and I pitied them.
Another thing about allergies is that they generally come in waves, going through good and bad phases, and that was definitely true of mine. In high school, this gave rise to a strange phenomenon. When my eczema flared up, none of the boys showed one iota of interest in me, but when my symptoms calmed down, I’d start being attractive to the opposite sex. I hadn’t changed a bit on the inside, but when my eczema worsened the wave of boys would ebb, and when it got better, the tide would rush in. The numbers of girls who would talk to me traced a similar kind of graph. The whole thing felt totally absurd.
My eczema has given me keen observational skills. It has enabled me to see what the person I am talking to is really like underneath. Those who see others as monsters don’t notice that those monsters are looking back at them in turn. When judging themselves superior, people are largely insensitive to the fact that they, too, are being judged. My observational eye serves me very well in my current job as an essayist. No doubt about it—it’s my superpower.
Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m bringing up superpowers now—and what exactly is a superpower, anyway? I should note at this point that I’m a die-hard French cinema fan (my all-time idols are Jane Birkin and Catherine Deneuve), but recently, in something of a departure from my usual habits, I went to see The Avengers. My fourteen-year-old son (familiar to regular readers of this column) was desperate to go. Watching him as he stood there, self-assured and suave, with a bucket of caramel-coated popcorn in one hand and a Coke in the other, I was struck by how much he’s grown. That said, once the film finished he was pestering me to buy him various bits of Avengers merchandise from the shop, so I guess he’s still got some way to go!