image: Tomomi F.
“Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
August, rapacious. Akihabara [1] wears the heat like a suit lined with pointed daggers. The people scowl, hurting too much to hurry across the avenues. The buildings have ruptured: stores spill forth their wares like overripe fruit. Customers flit in and out, thirsting for the wet air conditioning.
She’s sitting in front of a store, in the twilit zone between scarring heat and sluggish cold, at a fold-out table. She could be 18 or 29. Her face is beautiful, fit for recycling after one use. And she’s wearing a costume. A maid, or a princess, or some role that involves white lace and a black frock. She does not sweat, she doesn’t even slouch in her seat.
Behind her is a banner with a very different picture. It’s the picture of a woman with great dishplate eyes and long blonde plastic hair in a complicated braid. That woman is not dainty, she is dressed plate armor of European design. That portrait is flanked by kanji more like Rorschach blots than any written language. There is no passing resemblance between the two women. But many interchangeable heroines can be seen in the store, and up and down the block.
Ten minutes pass.
In that time, one scrawny boy has visited the table. The two shook hands politely, limply, as Japanese do. They spoke. She smiled a plasticine smile. He went away. Her posture is as fixed as it has ever been.
A half hour more will pass before she has another visitor.
There will come a time—when the sponsor pulls out, or later tonight when she’s alone in her tiny apartment, or yet today as this abominable heat rakes its claws against the anarchic cool—that the facade will crack, then splinter. Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image. And the drying human remains left behind, what will become of them? Will they try and pull back inside their shell? Will they beg for the attention this lifestyle didn’t grant them? Will they lie fetal, scared beyond any recovery, and mew out in blind horror at their fate?
referenced works
- Akihabara, or just "Akiba" for short, is ground zero for electronic goods, comics and anime merchandise, and maid cafes. The other otaku destination in the city is Nakano Broadway, a faintly mouldering shopping complex from the sixties. For an interesting comparative look at Akiba maniacs versus other Tokyo subcultures, see W. David Marx's article on Akiba-kei vs. Shibuya-kei here. ↩
location information
- Name: an unnamed anime and games shop
- Time of story: afternoon
- Latitude: 35.699318
- Longitude: 139.771449
- Map: Google Maps
033 “Dewy eyes closed, her porcelain arms and legs splayed attractively”
032 “The ika had made too many turns.”
031 “A tongue was moving around my big toe, like a warm slug crawling. ”
030 “Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
029 “I wince, more than her.”
028 “Their schoolbags were puddled around their socks, forgotten”
027 “Amongst the bottles and the obscure records and the crimson velvet walls”
026 “Nostalgia isn’t an easy indulgence for amateurs”
025 “... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
024 “The inhabitants of the blue, makeshift tents in the bushes.”
023 “Yeah … I’m sorry too. Merry Christmas.”
022 “I was dead broke. It was winter.”
021 “The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
020 “The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
019 “She laughed at my effort and responded in English, ‘Long time, no seduction.’ ”
018 “In my dreamy state, oblivious to signs and announcements I often boarded the wrong train.”
017 “I was fifteen years old and it was one of those nights.”
016 “That ear of corn just wanted to go home”
015 “With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
014 “Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
013 “I saw them drawing bamboo sticks from a silver rectangular box.”
012 “A simulacrum of someone else's home, equal parts comfort and loss.”
011 “Jumbled Escheresque insanity where geography in any traditional sense ceases to exist.”
010 “I could hardly make out anything apart from his glowing eyes...”
009 “Shibuya was like a stroke.”
008 “I cried for a while and wiped the dead bracken off my karate pants.”
007 “Both my tie and my disposition hang limp as I calculate the remaining distance to the station.”
006 “I once read about a Chinese maiden whose feet were unbound by a cruel man …”
005 “The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
004 “I arrived expecting an irritated Japanese person to step out of the crowd and identify himself as Hideki.”
003 “The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
002 “Flanked on either side by adult manga shops and the like, the smell of yakitori in the air.”
001 “For two weeks the day began with this morning walk, our shared routine.”
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