May Kasahara Goes to Work at a Mountain Wig Factory

May Kasahara’s move to a mountain wig factory is a self-chosen passage from school and an unsettled period at home into work, routine, and relative independence. She takes a job implanting hair by hand in a remote factory, where the repetitive craft offers a way to keep busy and avoid dwelling on upsetting thoughts; six months after arriving, she feels settled.

The factory and its work

The factory lies in the mountains outside a provincial city facing the Sea of Japan. Though May initially calls it a factory, she emphasizes that it differs from the industrial image she associates with noisy machinery, crowded spaces, and smoke. Its grounds are spread across a wide area, and the workplace is bright and quiet. Most employees are young women; men in white coats work in a separate laboratory on product development.

Many of the women live in the company dormitories. May describes the rooms as singles and the facilities as comfortable, with meals, a heated pool, a library, and optional activities such as tea ceremony and flower arranging. Living on site avoids a difficult daily commute from town. The factory’s location in snow country is connected to a regional tradition: farm women have long done detailed handiwork during winter to earn money, a custom the company is said to have considered when choosing the area.

The work itself is painstaking rather than mechanized. Employees implant small bunches of real hair into hairpieces one at a time, carefully enough to make each toupee a delicate product. May likens the repetitive process to planting seedlings in a rice field. She says the girls do not complain about the work, and she finds that kind of hand labor suits her.

Why May chooses the job

May’s move follows six months at a high-class hotel, jail, or country school, after which she returns home and spends time there without settling on what to do next. A former boss had once mentioned, partly as a joke, that the wig company was short of factory workers and would hire her. He showed her a pamphlet, and the factory’s appearance appealed to her. She also remembered his explanation that workers made hairpieces by hand.

Her decision is not presented as the pursuit of a long-held career plan. May says she is tired of school, dislikes the thought of simply staying at home under her parents’ care, and has no other specific ambition. Because she is good at sewing and has impressed her teachers with that skill, factory work seems like something she might enjoy. The prospect of keeping her hands occupied from morning to night, without thinking about things that upset her, is part of its appeal.

May secures her parents as sponsors and obtains a recommendation from her former boss, who has seen her work on a survey. After passing an interview at company headquarters, she packs only her clothes and boom box. She travels alone by bullet train, transfers to a small train into the hills, and reaches the town the following week. The distance and unfamiliarity initially leave her thinking she may have made a mistake, but after six months she reports that she has adjusted and feels settled.

Wigs, work, and the worn-away life

The factory job also follows May’s interest in wigs. She recalls that market research in Ginza exposed her to many men with thinning hair and made her newly aware of how common hair loss was. She clarifies that she neither likes nor dislikes bald men; what holds her attention is the sense of life being worn away that she associates with thinning hair. The interest is therefore not simply an attraction to a product or a judgment about the men who use it.

That perception gives the work a particular resonance. May spends her days attaching hair to hairpieces, while remaining attentive to the signs of loss that make such products meaningful to their customers. The factory’s careful, repeated handwork supplies a concrete routine, but her own explanation makes clear that wigs also draw her toward an image of gradual diminishment. The job combines practical employment with an interest she had not fully recognized before.

A new interval in May’s life

May’s move changes her circumstances without resolving every question about her future. She leaves the school environment, travels without her parents, and takes up an ordinary paid job in a remote town. The work gives shape to her days and lets her rely on a skill she already possesses; the dormitory and workplace provide a settled setting after a period of uncertainty at home.

The account is framed as May telling Mr. Wind-Up Bird about her present life and explaining how she arrived there. Its conversational form makes the decision legible through her own practical reasoning: she wants to work, has no grand plan, and is drawn to sewing, wigs, and the prospect of concentrating on hand labor. The factory is both a place of adjustment and a chosen interval in which she can keep busy while considering the worn-away quality of life that has long interested her.