Who is that masked woman?
(This article, which first appeared in the
Japan Times of March 31, 2007,
is reproduced here in Eyes on Japan by kind permission of the
author.)
'Tis the season of masks in Japan.
No, it's not Halloween nor Mardi Gras and no one is
having a ball.
Instead, it's pollen time and for the last few weeks
mask-wearers have haunted the Tokyo trains and walkways like phantoms
escaped from some ghostly surgery. Eyes run wet and red above white-wrapped
faces — tormented souls who are not quite the walking dead, though some
may feel that way.
Included among these sufferers is my wife, who wears
her mask even to bed. Not that it helps. Only one night in three can she
find a good night's rest, in which she dreams of skipping merrily through a
forest of cedars with a chainsaw.
She moans she is miserable and gripes about our
perpetual lack of tissues, not noticing that her nose-blowing has
over-filled every wastebasket in our house. If her discarded tissues were
snow, we could ski from room to room.
So it is up to me, a nonsufferer (heh, heh) to bring
light to her despair and tell her there is much to be said for wearing a
mask.
For one thing, she can claim increased anonymity in
a city where, even without masks, the endless crowds dissolve into one
bleached mass of nobodies. In such crowds, only the odd and obnoxious stand
out. But with her face cloaked in a mask, my wife can now savor the best of
both worlds. She can be odd, obnoxious and anonymous all at the same time.
No one, for example, would stand in the train and
mouth out the lyrics to tunes on their iPod. That would earn from other
passengers both stares and a reasonable distance. But now my wife can enjoy
her own lip-synched hour of karaoke on her every journey into the city, with
no one around her the wiser. She must only be careful not to bob her head
with the beat. Or cut loose with volume during the chorus.
"I feel too crummy to sing," she says.
So? The mask also allows her to be more emotional
with her appraisals of other passengers. During pollen free months, she must
tolerate all the death-by-a-thousand cuts discourtesies that make most train
rides unbearable: the young tough who refuses to give his seat to the
elderly, the salesman chatting up his customers via cell phone, the
backpacking college kid who body slams passengers every time he swivels, the
headphoned high schooler with his music slipping out to fill the entire
train, the salaryman farting off his latest hangover.
At most times, she can only endure all this till her
destination. But with a mask, I tell her, she can fight back and add silent
exclamation to her endurance.
She can frown, she can bear her teeth, and she can
stick out her tongue. She can do it all in any combination. She can mouth
out any comment she wishes. Behind the mask, she can transform — like a
comic book superhero — into a different sort of woman. One who can now
spar hard with the insensitivities of her environment, albeit behind a
curtain. The surge of emotion might even help her forget her allergies.
"I won't do that."
Again, so? A mask, she might find, could also
deflect the wandering eyes of the male predators that can lurk in crowded
trains. A mask — and perhaps what it symbolizes:
a rheumy and run-down
woman — can keep her safe. A state I support all the way.
"You support me being rheumy and run
down?"
"Yes, and you can multiply that effect with a
thicker and larger mask."
Such masks cover more and can change the train from
a box of men and women to a collection of men, women and the masked — this
last group somehow apart from the others and hidden — as if under masks of
invisibility.
What's more, there's no need for tissues with a mask
either. You can sneeze whenever you like and still keep both hands free.
Of course, my wife has hoped to shed her mask as
soon as pollen season wanes. But these days I argue she should keep it.
There are far too many pluses.
"Maybe you're right," she says.
"I am?"
"And not only on the train, but at home
too."
Uh-oh. But she refuses to tell me how, until I flick
out the light and snuggle close for a good-night smooch.
Only to be met by a protecting wall of paper.
"What?"
"Imagine me," she says. "Sticking out
my tongue. In the meantime, don't tease me while I'm sick." Then she
rolls over.
Invisible? No. Untouchable? Yes.
Uh, like I said, it's pollen season. Only a little
more to go until millions will be free from both their masks and their
misery. I guess you can count me among the suffering.
©Thomas Dillon for the Japan Times 2007. All rights
reserved
Editor's note: Sincere thanks to the author for
his kind permission to republish the above article, which first appeared
in his regular Japan Times column "When East Marries
West".
This page last updated 2008-06-16
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