Title: The Skirt I Wear
Subtitle: A Japanese Story of Gender and Belonging
Series: Japanesque TS
Author: Yulia Yu. Sakurazawa
Writing this novel wasn’t something I’d planned.
It all began quite unexpectedly, on the morning of May ninth. As I walked through Kasumi Park, a familiar path for me, I passed by a young man coming from the opposite direction, perhaps around twenty years old, pushing a bicycle.
At first glance, I thought he was just wearing navy blue shorts. But as he drew closer, the hem seemed… flared. Then I noticed the fabric swaying left and right as he walked. “Surely not!” I thought.
It wasn’t until he was just two or three meters away that I realized it wasn’t shorts at all, but a navy blue pleated skirt, much like a girls’ high school uniform. I stopped, utterly stunned, and watched him walk away. His figure, pushing the bicycle with such complete nonchalance, quickly shrank in the distance.
There wasn’t a trace of effeminacy about him; if anything, he had a rather rustic face, with the shadow of a beard.
That encounter, exactly as Kairi experiences it in the opening chapter, truly happened to me. In that moment, walking through the park, I was the protagonist observing this unexpected sight. The image of him, so natural in his skirt, struck me so profoundly that I went straight home and began writing this story that very same day.
To this moment, I cannot begin to imagine what purpose he had, wearing that high school uniform skirt while pushing his bicycle.
I suppose things happen all around us in this world that are far beyond our comprehension.
Compared to that, perhaps the events within this novel are not so surprising after all.