Where the Wild Ladies Are

In this witty & exuberant collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales, humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services--from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime. A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits & cleans while a single mother is out working. 

Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women—who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, & other excessive “feminine” passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents & recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company. 

In this witty & exuberant collection of linked stories, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales—shapeshifting wives & foxes, magical trees & wells—& wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, & transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them.

Aoko Matsuda is a writer & translator. In 2013, her debut book, Stackable, was nominated for the Mishima Yukio Prize & the Noma Literary New Face Prize. In 2019, her short story ‘The Woman Dies’ (from the collection The Year of No Wild Flowers), published on Granta online, was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. Her novella The Girl Who Is Getting Married was published by Strangers Press in 2016. She has translated work by Karen Russell, Amelia Gray & Carmen Maria Machado into Japanese.

Polly Barton is a Japanese literary translator.