The Face of Another by Kobo Abe Search Amazon for other books by or about Kobo Abe. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

It was T.S. Eliot who wrote "Between the thought and action, between motion and the act falls the shadow." The shadow, when the thought and the action are interactions with another, may be considered to be the face--not just the physical face, although a person without a face appears monstrous indeed but, also, the face as a measure of personal status and the creation of identity. Japan is one of the East Asian countries in which "face" is a measure of the individual and the ability of the individual to be treated with respect and dignity as a person who has accumulated physical and personal resources which may be mediated between the essence of the individual and the world. Face is, therefore, a means of protecting the person from the world. Imagine, therefore, that a man, a scientist, has his face burned off in some terrible laboratory accident. He would become (in addition to monstrous on an aesthetic basis) wholly defenceless in the eyes of society, which is always a beast ready to leap in to attack any sign of weakness. This is the basis of The Face of Another and it recalls what happens when the scientist endeavours to create a mask to interpose between his naked personality and the world.

At first, the mask is simply an inanimate object without any particular meaning but, as the scientist invests more and more of his effort and thought into creating it and adapting it for use, the mask starts to take on the characteristics of a semi-living and sentient creature. As well as making it possible for the scientist to participate in the world, it also starts to intervene in its own right. Central scenes involve the scientist trying to approach his wife (from whom he has become emotionally estranged, which is hardly surprising in the circumstances) and coming increasingly under the influence of the mask. Is it he or the mask which enables him to seduce his wife? Well, of course much of this book (which has lengthy philosophical ruminations which are not likely to appeal to every reader) uses people as symbols as well as symbols as people as a means of examining the nature of the individual and society. Those people wishing to think about the narrative on a more analytical level are provided with sufficient material as to approach the text from a variety of perspectives: there is the psychoanalytical, the sociological and the religious, not to mention the literary. Much of modern Japanese literature appears to have been infused with a Lacanian form of psychoanalysis or, at least, to be amenable to analysis from that point of view: Lacan argued, inter alia, that it is the descent of the spirit into the physical, which requires language for communication, that separates the individual from what is Real and it is the (possibly unconscious) awareness of this that leads to the misery, angst and alienation to which human nature is prey. The scientist, then, is confronted with a return to what is Real but is then progressively separated from it by the need to create and wear the mask in society for fear of being driven out as an abomination.

This is an excellent novel that will surely live long in the memory of its readers. I look forward to finding more of this author's works, especially the more well-known The Woman in the Dunes which has not, however, been available in any of the bookshops where I am from time to time able to browse.