JRZD-698 — First Shoot: Fifty-Something Wife Documentary — Yoko Shirayama

About this work

“It’s not that I was lonely. It’s not that I came to hate him. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with my family. It’s just… at this age, and I know it sounds strange coming from me, I’m not completely unwelcome in the neighborhood… I haven’t abandoned being a woman.” Yoko Shirayama, a fair-skinned, plump E-cup beauty from Tohoku, 52, who doesn’t look like she could have grandchildren. Mrs. Shirayama has lived a comfortable life; she married her husband, a childhood classmate from the neighborhood, and they have stayed together for 30 years. Seeing her stooped mother-in-law, she projected herself into that image and found herself thinking, selfishly, “Was there no other possibility for my life as a woman?” Even if people think she’s straying from the right path, she wants to live a life without regrets… On a chilly autumn day, she finally exposes her true self for the first time, acting on instinct in this candid, revealing document.