An enigmatic woman wearing a frilly white dress stands silently outside Matsuzakaya department store in Yokohama¡¯s Isezakicho district during a local festival. Her face is caked in white makeup and her eyes are lined in black.
The same woman wearing the same white dress and makeup stands near an elevator in the GM Building in the backstreets of Isezakicho, where she would collect tips in exchange for pressing buttons for customers as they make their way to their appointments.
She later sits her belongings and sleeps in a corridor of the same building. At other times, she dozes on a wooden chair, upon which a cushion bears a hand-scratched expression of love in what seems to be Japanese and Chinese.
The etching reads, ¡°I love you Ms. Meri.¡±
The above images are included in an award-winning 2006 documentary by Takayuki Nakamura on one of Yokohama¡¯s most well-known personalities: ¡°Yokohama Mary.¡±
Mary has over the years almost become something of an urban legend. Many locals either knew of the homeless woman¡¯s existence and some had even seen her, but no one really seemed to know anything about her.
Some say she was a former ¡±pan-pan¡± girl, a street prostitute who served American soldiers during the Allied Occupation of postwar Japan. Outside of that, however, little is known about Mary¡¯s background.
Rumor has it that she once appeared on the cover of Life magazine. Others have argued that she wasn¡¯t homeless at all, but lived in luxurious accommodation in the expensive district of Yamate.
It has even been said that Mary was a descendent of the Imperial family, with some calling the woman ¡°Her Majesty.¡±
Nakamura, a Yokohama native, first ran into Mary when he was in junior high school. At the time, he was on his way to see a movie.
¡°I was shocked when I first saw her,¡± Nakamura recalls. ¡°With her face painted white and being so still, from a distance I thought she was a statue. After that, it became quite normal to see her around. ... It¡¯s not like I would talk to her or interact with her in any way, but whenever I went into the city, she would always be there.¡±
In 1995, however, she suddenly disappeared. Locals thought she had probably died or had gone back to her hometown ¡ª supposedly in either Ibaraki, Fukushima or Hiroshima prefecture ¡ª...
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