About the Title, Girl in a Box

March 3 (third day of the third month) is Hina Matsuri, or the Dolls’ Festival. It’s sometimes called Girls’ Day. Girls display treasured, heirloom sets of dolls styled after Heian-era courtesans in their homes. Having a really fancy set is of course a status symbol. But the dolls only come out for a few days of the year. Most of the time, they are shut away in bubble wrap, protected from the world. Like so many girls around the world through history, they are prevented from taking part. From getting outside. From living!

That led to the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century phrase, hako-iri-musume (箱入り娘）, or daughter-in-a-box. It described daughters whose families protected them like dolls, to keep them unsullied, perfect virgins for marrying.

Akiko was like that. She grew up in a well-to-do family. Her parents locked her in her bedroom at night and rarely let her out of the house. For someone like her—intelligent, moody, willful—it was untenable. It wasn’t going to work! She had to break away, or die.