The Face of Another

by Kōbō Abe

  “But it isn’t particularly strange to respect content more than appearance, is it?”

  “Do you mean respecting contents that have no container? I have no faith in that. As far as I’m concerned I firmly believe that man’s soul is housed in his skin.”

  “Metaphorically speaking, of course.…”

  “It’s no metaphor …,” he continued soothingly, but in a conclusive tone. “Man’s soul is in his skin. I believe that to the letter. During the war when I was in the Army as a doctor, I learned that through intense experience. It was routine on the battlefield for men to have their arms and legs shot off and their faces smashed to pieces. But what do you think the wounded appreciated most? It wasn’t their lives, nor even the recovery of their faculties; what concerned men more than anything else was whether or not their looks would be the same as before. At first, I too would laugh them down. Because on the battlefield any value outside of bodily health and the number of stars on your insignia did not signify. However, one time I came across a soldier who didn’t seem to be badly hurt, outside of a horribly disfigured face; but just when he was on the point of leaving the hospital, he committed suicide. He had been in a state of shock. Since then, I have come to observe with the greatest care the appearance of soldiers who have been wounded. And, ultimately, I have come to one conclusion. And it’s a distressing one: serious exterior injuries, especially to the face, leave definite mental trauma.”

  “Well.… I suppose there are such cases. But, as long as there’s not exactly any basis in theory for the idea, I should not think of it as a general law no matter how many instances there were.” Suddenly an intolerable anger welled up in me. I had not come to talk about myself.

  “Actually, I myself don’t feel so keenly about it yet,” I went on. “I beg your pardon. I’m terribly sorry I’ve been wasting your valuable time when I’m so undecided.”

  “Please, just a minute.” He chuckled confidently. “Perhaps I have imposed on you, but I’m quite certain of what I’m saying. If you let things go as they are, most assuredly you’ll spend your whole life in bandages. The very fact of your wearing them at present is proof you think them infinitely better than what’s underneath. Well, for the present the face you had before you were hurt is still more or less living in the memories of the people around you. But time doesn’t wait. Gradually that memory will grow faint. People who never saw your original face will come to know you. In the end, you will be sentenced for nonpayment on the promissory note of your bandage. Although you’re alive, you’ll be consigned to oblivion.”

  “You’re exaggerating! What do you mean by that?”

  “You can see any number among the injured who have lost the use of their arms and legs. Even blind men and deaf mutes are not so extraordinary. But where have you ever seen a man without a face? You probably haven’t. Do you think they have all evaporated into thin air?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not interested in other people.”

  Inadvertently, my voice had become strident. It was like being severely lectured and forced to buy a lock after one has gone to the police station to report a theft. But K had not given up.

  “I’m sorry, but apparently you don’t really understand. The face, in the final analysis, is the expression. The expression—how shall I put it?—well, the expression is something like an equation by which we show our relationship with others. It’s a roadway between oneself and others. If it’s blocked by a landslide, even those who have been at pains to travel it will think you are now some uninhabited, dilapidated house and perhaps pass by.”

  “That’s quite all right. There’s no need for them to force themselves to stop in.”

  “In short, you mean you’re going your own way, don’t you?”

  “Is that wrong?”

  “It’s an established theory in infant psychology that the human animal can validate his ego only through the eyes of others. Have you ever seen the expressions of imbeciles or schizophrenics? If the roadway is left blocked too long, one ultimately quite forgets there is one.”

  To avoid being cornered, I tried to strike back at random.

  “Yes, indeed. So let’s suppose that expression is precisely what you say. Isn’t it all rather contradictory, though? How in the world will you restore expression with your way of doing things, which is to put a makeshift cover over only a certain part of the face?”

  “Don’t worry. If you’re concerned, please leave that to me. That’s my specialty. At least, I have confidence that I can offer you something better than your bandages. Well, now, shall we take them off? I’d like you to let me take a few pictures, and with them as a basis, we’ll make a graduated selection, by a process of elimination, of the elements necessary for the restoration of expression. We’ll pick some stable places with little mobility and.…”

  “I beg your pardon, but.…” I wanted only to get away. I forgot all about keeping up appearances and began to entreat and implore him. “Rather than that, I wonder if you wouldn’t just sell me that one finger.”

  As I anticipated, K was struck dumb with amazement, and rubbing his wrist along his thigh, said: “A finger.… This one, do you mean?”

  “If you won’t sell a finger, an ear or anything else will do very well.”

  “But.… It’s a question of the keloid scars on your face, I thought.”

  “I’m sorry. If it’s impossible, I’ll get along without it, but.…”

  “I don’t understand. It’s not particularly that I can’t sell you a finger, but … but, even that is surprisingly expensive. Anyhow, for each one, I have to make an antimony cast, you see. The cost of materials alone comes to about fifty dollars. And that’s a low estimate.…”

  “Fine.”

  “I really don’t understand … what you’re thinking of.”

  He didn’t have to understand. The whole exchange between us seemed to be proceeding on two quite divergent rails. I took out my wallet and, as I counted out the money, I repeated my earnest apologies.

  I left, holding the artificial finger in my pocket like a dangerous weapon. The shadows and light of evening were extremely distinct, but seemed more artificial than the finger. When some young boys who were playing catch in a narrow lane saw me, they changed color and pressed away from me against the fence. Their faces looked as though they were dangling by their ears on clothespins. If I took off the bandage and showed them the real thing, they’d be a lot more surprised! I was seized with an impulse to rip off my bandages in earnest and to jump into the midst of this landscape that seemed like pasted bits of paper. But without a face, it was impossible for me to take a single step away from my bandages. The picture of brandishing the fake finger in my pocket with all my might and ripping that landscape to pieces floated into my mind. I was no more affected by K’s disagreeable remark about being buried alive than by the filling of a molar. Well, look, if I could cover my face with an imitation completely indistinguishable from the real thing, however fake the landscape might be, it couldn’t make me an outcast.

  THAT evening, I stood the artificial finger on the table like a candle and spent a sleepless night endlessly pondering one aspect and then another of the “fake” which appeared more genuine than the real thing.

  Perhaps beyond that, I was imagining the masked ball of the fairy tale in which I would before long appear. But wasn’t it actually symbolic that even in idle fancy I could not help but add a “fairy-tale” commentary? I have written about this before, but I made my plans lightheartedly, as if I were skipping over some narrow ditch. Of course, I had thought out no final solution. Was it because I strove in my subconscious to consider the mask itself simply the extension of an entirely consistent attitude of self-defense, according to which the loss of my face was not the loss of anything particularly essential? From one point of view, the problem was not the mask itself; there seemed rather to be at work here a challenge to the face and to the authority of the face. If I had not come to feel cornered, because of th
e collapsed Bach and your rebuff, perhaps I should have felt considerably more nonchalant and glib about my face.

  Yet, a deep black shadow grew in my heart, like India ink dropped in a glass of water. It was K’s idea that faces were a roadway between men. When I reflected on it now, if I had been struck with a rather unfortunate impression of K, it was not because of his complacency nor his insistence on medical treatment, but apparently because of this thought. If one accepted such reasoning, I who had lost my face was destined to be shut up forever in a solitary cell … with no roadway … and so a mask became invested with a terribly profound meaning. My plan was to attempt to break out of my jail—on that I would stake my very being—and accordingly my present condition was a suitably desperate state. Indeed, what we mean when we say “terrible conditions” is conditions which we are aware of as being terrible. It was this awareness that I could not possibly accept.

  Even I recognize that a roadway between people is a necessity. I keep on writing these sentences to you precisely because I do fully recognize this. But I wonder if the face alone is the one and only roadway. I cannot believe it. My doctoral dissertation, which was on rheology, was properly understood by people who had never seen my face. Of course, with a mere scientific thesis one could not pretend to dispose of the matter of intercourse between people. Actually, what I ask of you is quite something else again. I want some sign of a completely meaningful human relationship—the lines are indistinct—call it heart or soul. Because this association is far more complex than a relationship between animals, who express themselves by their odors alone, I suppose facial expression is an adequate communicating roadway. Just as currency is a more evolved system of exchange than barter. But even currency is after all simply a means; it’s not almighty in every single situation. In some cases checks or money orders are more convenient; in others, jewels or precious metals.

  Isn’t it a preconception derived from habit to suppose that the soul and the heart are in the same category and can be negotiated only through the face? Isn’t it common to find a single poem or book or record that communicates with the heart far more profoundly than a hundred years of scanning faces. If a face were indispensable, a blind man couldn’t know such things as human characteristics, could he? I am more concerned about intercourse between human beings narrowing and stereotyped by too much dependence on the habit of faces. Actually, a good example is the stupid prejudice about the color of skin. To judge the soul’s roadway according to the color of a face is something describable only as an attitude which disregards the soul.

  EXCURSUS: When I read this over now, I suppose I did not want to be bound by my face, but I had apparently been making transparent self-justifications. For example, I was first attracted to you through your face. And even now, when I think of the distance between us, the measure of it is the remoteness of your expression and nothing else. Yes, for quite some time I should have frankly imagined that our positions were reversed and that you were the one who had lost your face. Undervaluation and overvaluation of the face are equally artificial. So it would seem that I referred before to my sister’s wig in order to explain my feelings of not wanting to cling to my face, but I am dubious about the suitability of that reference. In short, isn’t my concern about my face simply a common adolescent interest in, and antagonism to, cosmetics? Or perhaps I was beginning to feel slightly jealous of the fact that my sister was trying to make herself attractive.

  Incidentally, one more thing—I read once in some newspaper or review a strangely thought-provoking article about a Korean with Japanese blood, who in order to look more like a Korean went to the trouble of undergoing plastic surgery. This was clearly a stress on facial restoration, but it could never be said the man was implicated in prejudice. In the final analysis, I realized I hadn’t comprehended a single thing. If the opportunity presented itself, I should really like very much to hear what kind of advice the Korean would give someone like me who had lost his face.

  Finally, I tired of this soliloquy about a face, this soliloquy that made no progress. But there was no particular reason, either, to abandon the plans that I had been at pains to begin. I began to devote close attention to technical observations.

  The artificial finger had extremely interesting aspects. The more I looked at it, the more I appreciated the fine points of its construction. It expressed as much as an actual finger to me. From the tension of the skin, I should suppose it was the finger of a person aged about thirty. A flat nail, squashed areas on the sides, deep wrinkles in the joints, four small cuts in a row like shark’s gills. It probably belonged to a person engaged in light handwork.

  Yet, why was it so ugly? Repulsive! A kind of special unsavoriness, neither of the dead nor of the living. No, apparently nothing had gone wrong. Was it rather that the reconstruction was too faithful? (If so, that would be true of my mask too.) So, it could be that if one clung too closely to reality, the result might well be far from realistic. It may be all right to be particular about faces, but first take a look at this ugliness!

  It is quite true, of course, that an accurate copy may actually be unrealistic. However, could you conceive of a formless finger? A snake without length, a pot without volume, a triangle without angles? Unless such things exist on another planet, they are not to be seen with one’s eyes. If they were, even a face without expression wouldn’t be exceptional. Even if such a face did sometimes occur, it could hardly be a face. Indeed, masks have this much raison d’être.

  Then, the problem may lie in the physical element. First of all, it would be curious to speak of a form that couldn’t move as one’s person. If this finger could only move, it would look much better. As an experiment, I picked it up and tried working it. It did in fact seem more realistic than when it had been standing on the table. So there was no need worrying over that point. Thus I insisted from the beginning that mine must be a mask that moved.

  But I was still somehow dissatisfied. What in heaven’s name could be the cause of such Concern? I focused all my attention, comparing the artificial member with my own finger. There definitely was a difference, but.… Suppose it was not the fault of its being severed, nor the problem of movement. Could it be the quality of the skin? I wonder. Perhaps. There was a characteristic difference that could not be masked simply by form or color.

  MARGINALIA I: On the feel of skin. Human skin seems to be protected by a transparent matter having no pigmentation. Is not the look of skin, accordingly, one of complex interaction between the light rays reflected from the surface and those which, having passed through this surface, are again reflected from the pigment? This effect was not obtained in the case of the molded finger, since the pigment was directly on the surface.

  Inquire of a specialist about the composition and optical properties of this transparent matter in the skin.

  MARGINALIA II: Important subjects for investigation: wear of the material, elasticity and flexibility, fixing process, procedure with the edge line, ventilation, procurement of the model, and general procedure.

  To BE SURE, the very fact that I have tried to put these things down faithfully will bore you, and thus I shall lose everything in the end. But I should like to have you at least sense the atmosphere surrounding the early days of the mask, which had come into being almost unperceived by me, regardless of my ideas about it.

  First of all, the transparent substance in the skin is a type of horny albumen called ceratin, which contains very small fluorescent bodies. For the handling of the edge line I decided that I should have to make the thickness of the flange no larger, if possible, than a small wrinkle; later I hoped somehow to be able to overcome any remaining artificiality by devising a suitable beard. Moreover, even the problem of flexibility, which I foresaw as the greatest obstacle, was not at all insurmountable physiologically.

  Quite obviously the facial muscles are the basis of expression. Each muscle pulls in a fixed direction, and contraction and expansion occur along these lines. The skin tissue
, which has a fixed directional mobility, lies over them, and the cellular fibers of both apparently join at approximately right angles. According to the medical books I borrowed from the Institute library, the groupings of fibers in the skin are called “Langer lines.” Fortunately, a certain type of plastic showed great flexibility when subjected to directional stress. If I didn’t begrudge the time it would take, I could resolve the problem with about this much information.

  And so I decided to begin tests, in a corner of the laboratory, on the elasticity of flat epithelial cells. Here, too, my colleagues were most tolerant. I aroused almost no suspicions and was able to make constant use of the equipment.

  However, the procurement of a model and general procedure seemed impossible to manage technically. For the model—that is, the taking of a first impression, to reproduce skin details—I should have to borrow someone else’s face, no matter how disagreeable this might be. Of course just a little skin surface with some oil and sweat glands would do. Since I would transform it in accordance with my own facial structure, I would not be walking around dangling the face of another. There would be no need to worry about infringing on someone else’s copyright.

  However, even if that were the case—extremely serious doubts welled up in me—wouldn’t the mask be similar to my original face after all? By basing his model on the skull structure, a skilled craftsman could reproduce a completely life-like appearance. If that were true, then it was the underlying frame that ultimately determined one’s looks. I should be absolutely incapable of leaving the face I was born with except by shaving down the bones or disregarding the anatomical basis of expression, which in itself could hardly be called expression.