Publication
Vintage (2003), 256 p.
Original publication date
1964 (original Japanese)
1966 (English translation)
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Description
Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him. His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self–a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.
User reviews
LibraryThing member clfisha
What happens when someone 'looses' their face. Scientist Okuyama has a terrible accident with liquid nitrogen leaving his face covered in keloid scars. His loss of face, of his identity is slowly alienating him from society, but he has a plan, all he needs is a new face.
Written as a letter &
It's an intense, interesting novel. All the better for being cold and clinical and torturous. The plot itself is pretty obvious early on but this is not detrimental as narrative shifts breathe life where needed (and to be honest it's all the more unsettling when you can see the end).
The diary/letter format is a clever technique: there are really just two characters the writer and the reader. Drawn unpleasantly to ride with the narrator we automatically empathise with the intended recipient since, technically this person is us. It provides a space for us to stand apart from the narrator and to mock him, giving the book its cold intensity.
Written in Japan in the 60s it could of been a terrible outdated book but although a product of its time I think it still packs a punch. The question of identity hasn't changed that much. Rather you will hate this because of it's clinical nature or the themes it concentrates, if you aren't interested in the topic or require a complex action packed horror avoid. For me it was completely refreshing.
Written as a letter &
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diaries we are deeply and firmly placed into the character' s head and one that is deeply unpleasant, self cantered, intellectually superior, extremely misogynistic and filled with flawed logic. We are drawn through his philosophical musing, his research and his flawed logic into watching a descent into madness and the creation of a monster.It's an intense, interesting novel. All the better for being cold and clinical and torturous. The plot itself is pretty obvious early on but this is not detrimental as narrative shifts breathe life where needed (and to be honest it's all the more unsettling when you can see the end).
The diary/letter format is a clever technique: there are really just two characters the writer and the reader. Drawn unpleasantly to ride with the narrator we automatically empathise with the intended recipient since, technically this person is us. It provides a space for us to stand apart from the narrator and to mock him, giving the book its cold intensity.
Written in Japan in the 60s it could of been a terrible outdated book but although a product of its time I think it still packs a punch. The question of identity hasn't changed that much. Rather you will hate this because of it's clinical nature or the themes it concentrates, if you aren't interested in the topic or require a complex action packed horror avoid. For me it was completely refreshing.
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LibraryThing member KateSherrod
I experienced this story first several years ago via the film adaptation by the great Hiroshi Teshigahara.
So, one of the things that interests me is the tandem experience of book and film; the film really explores the idea -- a man's face is destroyed in an accident and he creates (or, in the film,
The book is written in an extended epistolary/diary form; the first person narrator is the scientist (nameless in the book) who has lost his face, writing an extended confessional to his wife. And herein lies the creepiness, for while he believes he has fashioned the mask (in secret, all on his own, in the book) to "restore the roadway" between him and his wife, he has gotten so carried away with the sudden duality of existence it affords him that he has actually come to think of The Mask as another person, a person who quickly becomes his Mr. Hyde, all id and transgressions, all an exploration of what he can get away with when no one knows it's him. Inevitably -- and I give nothing away here that isn't given away in the very opening paragraphs of the book -- he and it decide to see about seducing his own wife; the roadway he sought to restore to her is left forgotten; he takes the long way round and comes back at her as a stranger, and then rages with jealousy when Mask Him succeeds.
Throughout this confession, he reveals that the roadway was washed out long ago; he has created a wife-emulator in his head who is much stupider than she really is, less perceptive and with no self-determination, and unwaveringly regards his real wife as that lesser being. She is trapped in his imagination, confined to the smallest possible space, surrounded on all sides by him and his limited, limiting understanding of her -- and the further we get into the novel, the more oppressive is his tendency to project onto her most, if not all, of his negative feelings about himself. It's a classic trope, but I've never seen it so elegantly, horrifyingly done as here. The build-up to the actual meeting between Mask Him and his wife treats the seduction as a fait accompli ratchets the depressing creepiness up to eleven; all the time we spend alone (except for the Mask) in the nameless man's skull dials it up to twelve.
I can't recommend this one highly enough, shattering though it is.
So, one of the things that interests me is the tandem experience of book and film; the film really explores the idea -- a man's face is destroyed in an accident and he creates (or, in the film,
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has created) a mask so lifelike almost nobody realizes it's a mask at all, only to find that instead of restoring him fully to his life and his humanity, it has made him more of a monster than he was when his face was a hideous mass of scars and ruined tissue -- from the exterior. The plot wanders quite a bit from that of the novel, but that's immaterial for my purposes; what interests me now is how book and film complement each other; the film cannot, except in voice-overs, really explore the inner man of the scientist except indirectly (hence the introduction of a sub-plot lifted mostly from a film our protagonist watches early on in the book, of a girl, her face half destroyed in the Hiroshima bombing, who does charitable work for WWII veterans despite her disfigurement, but who is ultimately too isolated by it to continue); for all its startling imagery (get a load of that doctor's office, wholly invented for the film), it does not begin to come close to what makes the book such a disturbing read.The book is written in an extended epistolary/diary form; the first person narrator is the scientist (nameless in the book) who has lost his face, writing an extended confessional to his wife. And herein lies the creepiness, for while he believes he has fashioned the mask (in secret, all on his own, in the book) to "restore the roadway" between him and his wife, he has gotten so carried away with the sudden duality of existence it affords him that he has actually come to think of The Mask as another person, a person who quickly becomes his Mr. Hyde, all id and transgressions, all an exploration of what he can get away with when no one knows it's him. Inevitably -- and I give nothing away here that isn't given away in the very opening paragraphs of the book -- he and it decide to see about seducing his own wife; the roadway he sought to restore to her is left forgotten; he takes the long way round and comes back at her as a stranger, and then rages with jealousy when Mask Him succeeds.
Throughout this confession, he reveals that the roadway was washed out long ago; he has created a wife-emulator in his head who is much stupider than she really is, less perceptive and with no self-determination, and unwaveringly regards his real wife as that lesser being. She is trapped in his imagination, confined to the smallest possible space, surrounded on all sides by him and his limited, limiting understanding of her -- and the further we get into the novel, the more oppressive is his tendency to project onto her most, if not all, of his negative feelings about himself. It's a classic trope, but I've never seen it so elegantly, horrifyingly done as here. The build-up to the actual meeting between Mask Him and his wife treats the seduction as a fait accompli ratchets the depressing creepiness up to eleven; all the time we spend alone (except for the Mask) in the nameless man's skull dials it up to twelve.
I can't recommend this one highly enough, shattering though it is.
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LibraryThing member azfad
An interesting work - Kafka as seen through the eyes of a Japanese existentialist. The manner in which it is written, fixed perspective interior dialogue throughout, is hard to focus on for 200-odd pages and there were times i drifted off and thought about the shopping mid-sentence but still, a
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disturbing and eerie book worth reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member franoscar
Guy loses face, guy makes a mask, guy ponders all the different ramifications of faces and masks. Too philosophical for my taste.
LibraryThing member theageofsilt
If someone loses a leg in an accident, he is still the same person. What if someone loses his face? This difficult novel ponders identity and whether someone can chose his identity when a scientist's face is severly scarred in a chemical accident. I didn't understand this book on a human level at
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all. The narrator's reactions are intellectual rather than emotional. I don't find questions of identity as compelling as other areas of the human experience. Show Less
LibraryThing member SqueakyChu
Wow! This book was so interesting. I’m a big fan of works by Kobo Abe, and this novel did not disappoint. It’s the story of a married man whose face had been disfigured by an accident. This unnamed narrator tells the story of a mask he makes and how this mask takes on a life of its own. Very
This is a deep book about identity, some of which was a bit over my head. However, for the most part I was fascinated not only by the turn of events in this story, but also by the fact that the author did such an amazing job writing both from the point of view of the narrator as well as that of the mask.
Although I’ve read several other books by Kobo Abe, I am always eager to read even more of his surreal fiction.
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dismayed by a distressing situation over which he did have control, he is startled by the outcome of his mask project.This is a deep book about identity, some of which was a bit over my head. However, for the most part I was fascinated not only by the turn of events in this story, but also by the fact that the author did such an amazing job writing both from the point of view of the narrator as well as that of the mask.
Although I’ve read several other books by Kobo Abe, I am always eager to read even more of his surreal fiction.
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Language
Original language
Japanese
ISBN
9780375726538
Physical description
462 p.; 7.89 inches
Pages
462