Kobo Abe is a writer I came to learn of after having watched a trilogy of films by Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara, all of which were adaptations of Kobo Abe’s works. The first film I watched was The Face of Another, based on Abe’s novel with the same title. And because the film is both excellent and philosophical (putting both Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni stylistically in mind) I immediately sought out a number of Abe’s works.
As a novel, The Face of Another is a very good book, albeit I don’t think it is as good as the film. But since this is a review of the book and not the film, I can only say that I do recommend this book, despite the novel not adding much to that of what the film already accomplishes. The story tells the tale of a scientist who has been physically scarred from a laboratory accident, thus resulting in hideous appearance — so much that he is forced to bandage his face. Eventually he creates a mask of his own — one that is undetectable, with a face he “purchases” from a stranger. On one hand, The Face of Another offers a greater exploration into isolation and loneliness, and the scientist, who is left with no one, cannot even connect with his own wife because she too has grown disgusted by him.
The mask is so convincing that not anyone, save for a retarded girl who lives in the same building as he, is able to recognize that the man in bandages is the same one in the mask. And as the narration progresses, it is actually the mask that, in a sense, “takes over” and isolates him even more from culture than did his actual scars. For example, when he decides to seduce his wife, the scientist becomes angry because he is convinced his wife is unaware of who he is, thus believing her sexual act with him is on par with marital infidelity. This scene is dramatically acted out within the film, where the wife claims she did in fact know the man was her husband, and ironically, for as much as he desires human contact and comfort, when he is finally offered it, he rejects it.
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