10



So, Then, the Next Problem
(May Kasahara's Point of View: 2)



*


Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
Have you thought about where I am and what I'm doing, the way I told you to at the end
of my last letter? Were you able to imagine anything at all?
Oh, well, I guess I'll just go on under the assumption that you couldn't figure out a thing-
which I'm sure is true.
So let me just get it over with and tell you right from the start.
I'm working in- let's say-a certain factory. A big factory. It's in a certain provincial city-
or, should I say, in the mountains on the outskirts of a certain provincial city that faces the
Sea of Japan. Don't let the word "factory" fool you, though. It's not what you'd imagine: one
of those macho places full of big, high-tech machines grinding away and conveyor belts
running and smoke pouring out of smokestacks. It's big, all right, but the grounds are spread
out over a wide area and it's bright and quiet. It doesn't produce any smoke at all. I never
imagined the world had such widely spread-out factories. The only other factory I've ever
seen was the Tokyo caramel factory our class visited on afield trip in elementary school, and
all I remember is how noisy and cramped it was and how people were just slaving away with
gloomy expressions on their faces. So to me, a "factory" was always like some illustration
you'd see in a textbook under "Industrial Revolution."
The people working here are almost all girls. There's a separate building nearby, a
laboratory, where men in white coats work on product development, wearing very serious
looks on their faces, but they make up a very small proportion of the whole. All the rest are
girls in their late teens or early twenties, and maybe seventy percent of those live in the dorms
inside the company compound, like me. Commuting to this place from the town every day by
bus or car is a real pain, and the dorms are nice. The buildings are new, the rooms are all
singles, the food is good and they let you choose what you want, the facilities are complete,
and room and board is cheap for all that. There's a heated pool and a library, and you can do
things like tea ceremony and flower arranging if you want (but I don't want), and they even
have an active program of sports teams, so a lot of girls who start out commuting end up
moving into a dorm. All of them return home on weekends to eat with their families or go to
the movies or go on dates with their boyfriends and stuff, so on Saturday the place turns into
an empty ruin. There aren't too many people like me, without a family to go home to on
weekends. But like I said before, I like the big, hollow, empty feeling of the place on
weekends. I can spend the day reading, or listening to music with the volume turned up, or
walking in the hills, or, like now, sitting at my desk and writing to you, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.
The girls who work here are all locals-which means farmers' daughters. Well, maybe not
every single one, but they're mostly happy, healthy, optimistic, hardworking girls. There
aren't many big industries in this district, so before, girls wouldgo to the city to find jobs
when they graduated from high school. That meant the guys left in town couldn't find anybody
to marry, which only added to the depopulation problem. So then the town got together and
offered businesses this big tract of land to set up a factory, and the girls didn't have to leave. I
think it was a great idea. I mean, look, they got somebody like me to come all the way out
here. So now, when they graduate from high school (or drop out, like me), the girls all go to
work at the factory and save their pay and get married when they're old enough and quit their
jobs and have a couple of kids and turn into fat walruses that all look alike. Of course, there
are a few who go on working here after they get married, but most of them quit.
This should give you a pretty good idea of what this place is like. OK?
So now the next question for you is this: What do they make in this factory?
Hint: You and I once went out on a job connected with it. Remember? We went to the
Ginza and did a survey.


Oh, come on. Even you must have figured it out by now, Mr. Wind-Up Bird! That's it! I'm
working in a wig factory! Surprised?
I told you before how I got out of that high-class hotel/jail/country school after six months
and just hung around at home, like a dog with a broken leg. Then, all of a sudden, the thought
of the wig company's factory popped into my head. I remembered something my boss at the
company had once said to me, more as a joke than anything, about how they never had
enough girls for the factory and they'd hire me anytime I wanted to go work there. He even
showed me a pamphlet from the place, and I remember sort of thinking it looked like a really
cool factory and I wouldn't mind working there. My boss said the girls all did hand labor,
implanting hairs into the toupees. A hairpiece is a very delicately made product, not like some
aluminum pot you can stamp out one two three. You have to plant little bunches of real hair
very very very carefully, one bunch at a time, to make a quality hairpiece. Doesn't it make
you faint, just thinking about it? I mean, how many hairs do you think there are on a human
head? You have to count them in the hundreds of thousands! And to make a wig you have to
plant them all by hand, the way they plant seedlings in a rice field. None of the girls here
complain about the work, though. They don't mind because this region is in the snow country,
where it has always been the custom for the farm women to do detailed handiwork to make
money during the long winters. That's supposedly why the company chose this area for its
factory.
To tell you the truth, I've never minded doing this kind of hand labor. I know I don't look
it, but I'm actually pretty good at sewing. I always impressed my teachers. You still don't
believe me? It's true, though! That's why it ever occurred to me that I might enjoy spending
part of my life in a factory in the mountains, keeping my hands busy from morning to night
and never thinking about anything upsetting. I was sick of school, but I hated the thought of
just hanging around and letting my parents take care of me (and I'm sure they hated the
thought of that too), but I didn't have any one thing that I was dying to do, so the more I
thought of it, the more it seemed that the only thing I could do was go to work in this factory.
I got my parents to act as my sponsors and my boss to give me a recommendation (they
liked my survey work), I passed my interview at company headquarters, and the very next
week I was all packed (not that I took anything more than my clothes and my boom box). I got
on the bullet train by myself, transferred to a cute little train that goes up into the hills, and
made it all the way to this nothing little town. But it was like I came to the other side of the
earth. I was sooo bummed out when I got off the train! I figured I had made a terrible
mistake. But finally, no: I've been here six months now without any special problems, and I
feel settled in.
I don't know what it is, but I've always been interested in wigs. Or maybe I should say
I've always been "attracted" to them, the way some guys are attracted to motorcycles. You
know, I hadn't really been aware of it before, but when I went out to do that market research
and I had a chance to see all those bald men (or what the company calls "men with a thinning
problem"), it really struck me what a lot of guys like that there are in the world! Not that I
have personal feelings one way or another toward men who are bald (or have a thinning
problem). I don't especially "like" them or "dislike" them. Take you, for example, Mr. Wind-
Up Bird. Even if your hair were thinner than it is now (and it will be before too long), my
feelings toward you would absolutely not change in any way. The only strong feeling I have
when I see a man with a thinning problem is that sense I think I mentioned to you before of
life being worn away. Now, that is something I'm really interested in!
I once heard that people reach the peak of their growth at a certain age (I forget whether
it was nineteen or twenty or what), after which the body starts to wear out. If that's the case,
then it's just one part of the "wearing away" of the body for the hair to fall out and grow
thinner. There's nothing strange about it at all. Maybe it's normal and natural. If there's any
problem in all this, it's the fact that some guys go bald young and others never go bald, even


when they're old. I know if I were bald, I'd think it was unfair. I mean, it's a part of the body
that really sticks out! Even I understand how they feel, and the problem of thinning hair has
nothing to do with me.
In most cases, the person losing his hair is in no way responsible for whether the volume
of hair he loses is greater or less than anybody else's. When I was working part time, my boss
told me that the genes determine ninety percent of whether a person is going to go bald or
not. A man who has inherited a gene for thinning hair from his grandfather and father is
going to lose his hair sooner or later, no matter what he does to prevent it. "Where there's a
will there's a way" just doesn't apply to baldness. When the time comes for the gene to stand
up and say, "All right, now, let's get this show on the road" (that is, if genes can stand up and
say "Let's get this show on the road"), the hair has no choice but to start falling out. It is
unfair, don't you think? I know I think it is.
So now you know I'm out here in this factory, far away from where you are, working hard
every day. And you know about my deep personal interest in the toupee and its manufacture.
Next I'm going to go into somewhat greater detail on my life and work here.
Nah, forget it. Bye-bye.