A TO Z CHALLENGE 2016 -- OSHIROIBABA

You see the old woman and sneer at her shabbiness.  Her ragged kimono and tattered, overlarge sugegasa overwhelm the hunched woman.

Distaste curls in your mind as you see the tokkuri of sake.

Light shines in her eyes when she sees you.  Leaning on her bamboo cane, she tells you she is a peddler of face powder guaranteed to make you even more beautiful.

 Inwardly preening as your ego is stroked, you know your beauty is talked about by the neighbors, but you scoff.

She offers it for half price as she tells you to think of the young man and your competition.

Your heart skips a beat as you think of Satori winning Akane's heart.

You buy the powder and rush home.  You apply it to your face and wonder what is so special about it.

Then pain.  Agony makes you scream. In the mirror, your face begins to melt away.



Oshiroibaba comes on the twelfth month on moonlit nights.  She is sometimes referred to as a servant of the Goddess of Crimson Cosmetics, but there is only one reference to this.

Her name translates to 白粉 (oshiroi; white face powder) + 婆 (baba; old woman, hag).  The face powder reference is mostly toward the specific one used by geisha and maiko.

In the Konjaku hyakki Shūi, Toriyama Sekien presents her in this third
book of the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, which was published in around 1781.

She is supposed to have face powder slathered on her face willy-nilly and in a few stories has an invisible mirror that is dragged behind her.

Her powder is said to melt off the faces of those who use it.  Maybe it was punishment for the vain?