Original language:
Japanese Translated from: Russian
Authors: Abe, Kōbō
Translated by: Lenkauskienė, Dalia
Published in: Vilnius
Published on: 1973
Publisher: Vaga
Kobo Abe is the worlds famous novelist-romanist. He is one of the best known japanese writers from the postwar period. When Kobo Abe become intrested in sci-fi, he stars to create philosophical sciense fiction works „ The crime of S. Karuma“, „Inventions by No.R62” etc. Also he is writing about actualities from that time. He traveled through socialistic Eastern Europe and created one of the best known novels “The woman in the dunes”. His peculiar and original style shown himself in …the “Face of another” too.
„The face of another” by Kobo Abe is a novel – allegory, which action takes place in Japan around late 60’s. However concept of place and time does not really matter in this novel because compositions space is in the characters mind- his thoughts. Therefore the story is timeless. It tells about advanced science also about timeless values and social phenomenon. The tale is about scientist, who had an accident with liquid oxygen and after that incident his face was dramatically ruined. Face is a mirror of soul and feelings, but personage must always wear bondages all over his face and nobody can see what is under it. Because of that his wife, colleagues and friends step by step moves away from him. Scientist is forced to do something about it, so he creates a new mask, which is very realistic yet looks like a different men’s. According to character, the mask should make him feel like a human being again and above all, the relationship with his wife somehow just might be saved. However when he is creating the mask another personality suddenly appears. And now he has two identities, which is competing against each other – his and masks.
But there are a lot more behind the story. The novel is like a long painful confession to scientist’s wife. Every thought and secret feelings are here, written in detail. Kobo Abe adverts the problems like a man’s alienation, dissembles, loneliness. You can see how important factors like a skin color, appearances are. Also this novel tells that the mask is common expression: everybody wears it, everybody has a self-protection mechanism. This is a story about man who has been hurt badly and has created the new “me” to protect himself from this world.
Style of the book is another interesting fact. It is like a letter or notebook, with a lot of speaker’s notes and post scriptum. This style creates a feeling that these thoughts are yours and you somehow become involved.