The Omorashi Girls by Garrett Caples

Takiguchi was delighted. The director lit a cigarette. It was his symbol of delight. Otherwise he was expressionless. He exhaled languidly, crossing his legs, seemingly absorbed in a spot on his boot. Takiguchi, it must be said, dressed like a director but only while editing. “Film is editing,” he would say with a solemnity immune to contradiction, and the fact he worked in video. “On the street would be conspicuous.”

This from the man who said: “In the future, everything happens in public.” It was already true in Tokyo.

One of the omorashi girls, Yuki, was dressed in a plaid schoolgirl jumper, earnestly attempting to don a thick pair of kogal socks with one hand while holding a jumbo soda in the other. She sucked hard and continuously on the straw, like she was in a contest, though if the contest were putting on socks with one hand, she’d definitely lose. Beside her on the couch, in a tan pantsuit signifying “office lady,” Yumi was demurely sipping from a thermos of green tea. “Getting into character,” she said, and there was almost a hint of a smile on Takiguchi’s face as he swiveled back to the monitor. Yumi was so professional.

It was nearly two in the afternoon. But Takiguchi refused to budge before Yuri returned in a pair of overalls. Overalls were out this year, so Yuri’d been gone for hours. She was a problem, this Yuri; she’d yet to complete a take. Earlier, the normally imperturbable Takiguchi grew so furious he threatened to send her downstairs to the genre of eating unpleasant things, from whence she’d been promoted to omorashi girl. But the large tears which welled up in her eyes and rolled off her cheeks to splash at her feet seemingly stayed his hand. (Let it not be said this director was unsympathetic to tears.) Instead he gave her a voucher and sent her out for overalls.

The crew—two cameramen, a soundman, and a driver—were sitting around costing money. But the studio tolerated such expenses for the meticulous but never extravagant Takiguchi, whose titles outsold by far any other director’s in the catalogue. Some of these men had gone on to direct “real” films, and Takiguchi’s apparent lack of ambition in this regard only further endeared him to the studio.

At last Yuri padded in in her panties and stocking feet, slurping on a Yoohoo. She’d finally found overalls, but they were in wardrobe being hemmed. She slid to a stop on the linoleum, fidgeting from foot to foot as Takiguchi approached with the shopping bag in which he habitually carried his street clothes. He produced from the bag a cable-knit sweater and a well-worn fisherman’s hat. He dropped the hat on her head and was about to hand her the sweater. “Finish,” he said, and Yuri knocked back the Yoohoo with the unflinching obedience of a graduate of the genre of eating unpleasant things. He handed her the sweater and took the empty Yoohoo. Then he withdrew to the men’s room to change, for Takiguchi, it must be said, was at heart a modest man.

“Certain accidents of human life,” Takiguchi began, “are as artistically contrived by chance or the laws of nature as by the most demoniacal invention: one cries out in wonder before them as before a painting by an impressionist who’s captured a singular, momentary truth.”

He was accustomed to issuing such maxims in the van on the way to the shoot. They were crucial to his technique, he said, though it was often unclear whether they were for the benefit of the crew, squeezed together on the van’s middle bench, or the omorashi girls, who sat in the back not listening. From time to time, camera two—Takiguchi himself was camera one—would kneel on the bench and shoot footage of the girls in transit; anticipatory filler, the director called it, for he shot according to formula, and it was in the freshness of each approach to the same unvarying scenario that Takiguchi’s art primarily lay.

Footage from camera two portrays a trio whose incongruity evokes the contents of a shopping mall elevator. (The director had a flair for contrast.) On one side, the schoolgirl Yuki chatters volubly between swigs from a bottle of water, bouncing both knees so her socks slide down her calves and bag at the ankles like a pair of sharpeis. In the middle, Yumi the office lady perches on the edge of her seat, legs crossed, politely punctuating Yuki’s soliloquies with convincing professional composure. On the other side, Yuri—who is Yuri? A longshoreman’s wife? A fisherman’s friend?—Yuri stares out the window in silence. The absurd bulk of her sweater resists any category; it is a token of the ineffable, like the fuzzy red cowboy hat worn by Aika Miro in the second installment of Omorashi Picnic. Aika had crossed over to real films, and there were those who felt Takiguchi’s selection of the fuzzy red hat had facilitated this passage, more difficult for girls than directors.

Parking next to Ueno Park is next to impossible at the end of March when the cherry trees bloom, so no one was surprised to see Takiguchi hop out of the still rolling van and run over to a man sleeping behind the wheel of another van, parked hard by the statue of Saigo Takamori. The man yawned and started the van, surrendering the space in exchange for a voucher. After quick consultation, the man drove off and Takiguchi ran back to the van in what was the director’s sole indication of haste.

Yumi shivered slightly as she emerged from the van for the soundman to attach a transmitter to her hip, snake a wire up her back, and insert it into a tiny microphone clipped to the collar of her blouse. It would all disappear beneath the coat of her pantsuit. The soundman was left behind to record, along with a furiously-pouting Yuki, while the rest of the company trooped off behind Takiguchi to confer under the statue of Saigo Takamori.

There was a broken public toilet outside the Tokyo National Museum, according to Takiguchi, and no one questioned how he knew. He sent camera two ahead to block out a shot. “It should take us 20 minutes,” he said. “Use form five. I’ll take the front; camera three will take the rear. Yuri and Tiny will follow at a distance and try to stay out of shot.” The director brought Yuri along in an observer’s capacity—Yumi was so professional—and Tiny because, like many men named Tiny, Tiny was huge, this being his chief qualification for driving the studio van. Had he not rescued the eighth episode of Girls on the Run from certain ruin by thumping an irate department store manager? Such moments, the director later said, his voice thick with rare feeling, reminded him that film was truly a collaborative medium.

What distinguished Takiguchi among his peers was the elegant economy of his arrangements. The park was packed with people celebrating the dignified ritual of hanami: tourists were gazing up, or down into cameras gazing up, at the snow-white canopy of cherry blossoms; lovers were strolling under the blossoms, gazing in each other’s eyes. Intent on the screen of his video camera, walking backwards, wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the English words “Yankees Suck,” Takiguchi completely blent in. Not that I could see him. The whole trick to form five was to keep the girl between cameras at such a distance we could shoot her front and back without shooting each other. It was best managed in heels to maintain a stately pace, Takiguchi claimed, and hence was suited to office attire.

In the late afternoon sunlight, the blossoms mellowed to a pale gold relieved by occasional outbursts of weeping pink shidarezakura, all harmonizing with Yumi’s tan pantsuit. I kept her in an Italian shot, giving me most of her legs yet slightly accentuating her ass, so snugly ensconced in the pantsuit suitpants I could read her pantylines. Once, when she paused and doubled over, by all appearances in unfeigned agony, I could make out her pantycrotch. Even as I shot I could scarcely restrain admiration; it was Takiguchi at his finest. If this was real life, it might have been the climax of the film. But Yumi soldiered on, keeping a running commentary on her condition which, by the time we passed the Museum of Western Art, consisted primarily of sharp intakes of breath, until the imposing bulk of the National Museum finally loomed in the distance.

An official sign directed us to the nearest public toilet, and, despite, a further sign of doubtful authenticity declaring the toilet closed for repairs, Yumi made a heroic show of hurrying to the door and frantically tugging the knob. Then, to the astonishment of a pair of similarly-thwarted senior citizens gravely consulting a brochure for the nearest available alternative, Yumi gasped, clutched her abdomen, and began to wet her pants. The wetness declared itself from behind as a slim, dark crescent defining her ass’s lower contour, before suddenly, violently expanding, like a life raft inflating. I took the liberty of zooming in and tracing its progress down her legs to her pantcuffs, where, with almost visible ecstasy, it regained the liquid state, only to overflow her heels and soak into the macadamized path leading to the door of the toilet. I pulled out to a wide shot of Yumi as she finished wetting herself. She stood a moment until her pantcuffs stopped dripping, perhaps slipping out of character as she calmly stepped off her high heels to empty them before reassuming an otherwise authentic masque of horror at her predicament. Alas, she was now too professional, and was already scheduled for promotion to cosplay, though the studio willingly bowed to client demand for this farewell performance. But the career of an omorashi girl was of necessarily limited duration, for it was hard not to get too used to it.

The van was parked, illegally, in front of Tiny’s mother’s autoparts shop, one of a long row of tiny autopart shops in Yanaka near the Daimyo-Dokei Clock Museum. It was that moment before twilight when the sky deepens to a royal blue and the streetlights glow but don’t illuminate, yet even against this propitious palette, Yuri looked positively green. She had a stomachache, a headache, and could scarcely hold still for two consecutive seconds. Yet try as she might, she’d been unable to wet her pants, merely releasing a few piddling drops insufficient to penetrate her panties, let alone register on the brand new denim of her overalls. She swore they were damp to the touch. Judging from his subtly increased air of imperturbability as he retreated into the shop to confer with Tiny, Takiguchi was beside himself. I kept camera three on Yuri just in case, but the day, for the most part, was a bust: the transmitter failed during Yumi’s take; camera two shot the wrong toilet; and Yuki’d already wet herself by the time the crew returned to the van. “I thought I was first!” she complained bitterly, holding the hem of the jumper’s soaked skirt away from the back of her thighs. The script called for her to wet her socks, not the skirt, and there was neither time for a rewrite nor a refill. Still the director gave her a voucher along with Yumi and the rest of the crew before packing them off in the other van.

He emerged from Tiny’s mother’s with an old pair of motorcycle boots, possibly Tiny’s from some prior stage of development as they fell several sizes short of his present shoe, though they managed to dwarf Yuri’s by as many sizes again when she donned them at the director’s behest. She could walk in them, just, buckling at the ankles with every precarious step. She stood wobbling on the sidewalk by the van’s sliding door while Takiguchi approached me as if to adjust my settings. “Camera three is camera one,” he said, cryptically. “Keep shooting no matter what.” When I asked what form we were following, he only replied: “Formless.” Then he returned to the green and wobbling Yuri. “Can you pee?” he asked. She shook her head despondently. “On the ground, I mean. Can you squat and pee on the ground?” Her face brightened considerably. “That’s easy!” she exclaimed, immediately becoming self-conscious of her candor, though far too worn out for genuine embarrassment. “Then it’s settled,” the director said. “Places!”

I stood on the sidewalk behind Yuri, to mitigate any unexpected foot traffic that might arise during the take, while Takiguchi stood in front, and the van shielded her from the scrutiny of passing motorists. Tiny slid behind the wheel and started the van.

“Cameras!”

Now the director knew perfectly well my camera was already rolling, so I could only assume that, despite the positively theatrical flourish he made of turning his own camera on, he also knew his camera wasn’t connected to a battery, and thus couldn’t be turned on. Yet he peered through the viewfinder, the way he never did with a digital camera, in great earnest; I half-expected him to start turning a non-existent crank.

“Action!”

On cue Yuri’s arms disappeared beneath her sweater to unhook her overalls, the fumbling haste with which she sought relief providing a reasonable facsimile of pee desperation. She glanced around nervously, still holding her overalls up, then hooking her thumbs into her panties and pulling both garments down in one deft maneuver as she squatted to pee. For several agonizing moments I filmed her asscheeks hovering in suspense before she finally let loose with a surprisingly thick golden arch, which spattered audibly on the sidewalk below. She gave vent to a loud sigh, almost a groan, and the spattering increased in tempo.

But at that very same moment, with a movement I can only characterize as swashbuckling, Takiguchi leapt onto the runningboard of the van, which lurched two vanlengths and as many autopart shops ahead, exposing the astounded Yuri to the equally astounded motorists of Yanaka. Yuri shrieked in protest, and, still peeing, scrambled after the van, which lurched further ahead before she could settle herself. Panicking, she pulled up her overalls, soaking them instantly as stood to pursue. But before she could reach the van, Tiny gunned the engine and sped down the street with the director still hanging off the side. The van rounded a distant corner, and, as there was no cover left, Yuri stumbled back to Tiny’s mother’s as fast as her awkward footwear permitted, attempting to conceal herself behind a plastic statue of Bibendum. She crouched there, stunned, staring down at her overalls in disbelief as she finished flooding them.

At length I heard the van pull up to the curb behind me. I expected Yuri to dive right in and hide, or possibly attempt some violence on Takiguchi’s person, but she simply stood and presented her saturated overalls to the camera for full inspection as she rehooked the straps beneath her sweater. She exhaled languidly, crossing her legs, seemingly absorbed in a spot on her boot. Otherwise she was expressionless. It was his symbol of delight. The director lit a cigarette. Takiguchi was delighted.

Garrett Caples is a poet and the author of The Garrett Caples
reader, He lives in Oakland Ca.