10

So, Then, the Next Problem (May Kasaharas Point of View: 2) Hi, again, Mr. Wind-Up Bird.

Have you thought about where I am and what Im 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 Ill just go on under the assumption that you couldnt figure out a thing- which Im sure is true.

So let me just get it over with and tell you right from the start.

Im working in- lets say-a certain factory. A big factory. Its 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. Dont let the word factory fool you, though. Its not what youd imagine: one of those macho places full of big, high-tech machines grinding away and conveyor belts running and smoke pouring out of smokestacks. Its big, all right, but the grounds are spread out over a wide area and its bright and quiet. It doesnt produce any smoke at all. I never imagined the world had such widely spread-out factories. The only other factory Ive 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 youd see in a textbook under Industrial Revolution.

The people working here are almost all girls. Theres 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. Theres a heated pool and a library, and you can do things like tea ceremony and flower arranging if you want (but I dont 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 arent 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 theyre mostly happy, healthy, optimistic, hardworking girls. There arent 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 couldnt 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 didnt 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 theyre 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! Thats it! Im 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 companys 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 theyd 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 wouldnt 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. Doesnt 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 dont 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. Thats supposedly why the company chose this area for its factory.

To tell you the truth, Ive never minded doing this kind of hand labor. I know I dont look it, but Im actually pretty good at sewing. I always impressed my teachers. You still dont believe me? Its true, though! Thats 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 Im sure they hated the thought of that too), but I didnt 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: Ive been here six months now without any special problems, and I feel settled in.

I dont know what it is, but Ive always been interested in wigs. Or maybe I should say Ive always been attracted to them, the way some guys are attracted to motorcycles. You know, I hadnt 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 dont 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 Im 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 thats the case, then its just one part of the wearing away of the body for the hair to fall out and grow thinner. Theres nothing strange about it at all. Maybe its normal and natural. If theres any problem in all this, its the fact that some guys go bald young and others never go bald, even when theyre old. I know if I were bald, Id think it was unfair. I mean, its 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 elses. 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 theres a will theres a way just doesnt apply to baldness. When the time comes for the gene to stand up and say, All right, now, lets get this show on the road (that is, if genes can stand up and say Lets get this show on the road), the hair has no choice but to start falling out. It is unfair, dont you think? I know I think it is.

So now you know Im 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 Im going to go into somewhat greater detail on my life and work here.

Nah, forget it. Bye-bye.