Confessions of a Mask

After the war, Kochan enters a haze. He summarizes many emotionally heavy events: He returns his university uniform to the soldier he had borrowed it from, his sister dies, and Sonoko gets engaged and married. While he continues to attend school, he does so mindlessly, with “the feeling of being neither alive nor dead” (220). Eventually, he realizes that he is not numb but in immense pain. Between social distractions, he studies for the civil service examinations, but he becomes deeply depressed and loses motivation to do anything. Unable to satisfy or even engage in his desires, he becomes tense and extremely anxious. He tries to live rigidly and exhausts himself doing so, even though he is doing little.

Noting that his real desires are too complex and deeply buried to require him to be prudish, Kochan tries once again to conjure up sexual attraction towards women. He stares at pornographic images and forces himself to imagine women sexually. Nothing has any effect. His only friend from university shares many physical and emotional similarities with him but is self-confident. This friend guesses that Kochan is a virgin and invites him to visit a brothel with him. Kochan notes that his friend thinks they are similar in mindset, and he longs to prove his friend right. Determined to not be a virgin at age 22, and desperate to unlock his attraction to women, Kochan agrees to go to a brothel.

Kochan refuses to drink before going to the brothel, determined to experience sex sober. Stressed, Kochan picks the brothel at random, and an ugly woman agrees to sleep with him; he does not care. He dutifully hugs and tries to kiss her, but she instructs him not to do so, as it will get lipstick on his face. They touch tongues instead. Describing the experience, Kochan says, “I felt my entire body becoming paralyzed with just such a pain, a pain that was intense, but still could not be felt at all” (226). Unable to have sex with her, he is ashamed of himself. He assumes his friend does not know the truth. Later, Kochan and his friend have a conversation with a womanizer called T, and Kochan’s friend notices that Kochan’s face turns pale when T claims to envy impotent men. Kochan’s friend discusses Proust with T, and they call Proust a sodomite. Kochan claims ignorance of the term and realizes their conversation cannot visibly offend him or he will reveal his secret. He suspects his friend already knows and, when they leave, sobs until he can dream violently and achieve peace.

Looking to distract himself from his pain and shame, Kochan attends parties at an old friend’s house. The people there, especially the women, are easy for him to talk to. They play games until late at night, including a version of musical chairs that causes many of the women to lose decorum. One girl slips and exposes her thighs. Unable to pretend any longer, Kochan stares at them, unbothered and unattracted, but pain strikes him, and he succumbs to self-hatred, feeling inhuman and monstrous for his lack of desire and lack of shame. His unmet sexual needs cause him to masturbate constantly, but he does not seek relationships with either men or women. He believes himself to be emotionally in love with Sonoko but sexually unable to love her, which prevents him from finding fulfilment elsewhere.

In the depths of depression, Kochan believes he sees Sonoko on the train and experiences a brief will to live. Although it is not her, he reexperiences the emotions she first provoked in him and becomes obsessive about the experience. Debating internally whether he is in love with Sonoko, he relives a variety of memories, all of which torment rather than soothe him. On the street, Sonoko runs into him and calls his name to get his attention, which does not excite him as the mistaken encounter had. He notes that she does not look married. She tells him to look after his health and he asks her what she has been reading. He suggests a novel with a naked woman on the cover and is surprised that she openly calls the cover disgusting, as she would have once been too shy to do so. They joke about the konnyaku she is carrying, a vegetable gelatin, and Kochan learns that she intends to visit Kusano and the rest of her family on Saturday. Kochan wonders why she has forgiven him and decides that he could heal if she insults him. Kusano has never implied that the end of their relationship hurt Sonoko, which bothers him because it hurt him, and he wants the pain to be mutual.

Under the pretense of going to see Kusano, Kochan goes to their house on the day Sonoko is visiting. He listens to her play piano, noting that her playing is beautiful and mature, no longer childish and unpracticed. The three of them talk, but eventually Kusano leaves Sonoko and Kochan alone. She briefly brags about her husband, which Kochan finds attractive, and she finally asks why they did not marry. She expresses her continued confusion and asks if it was because he secretly disliked her. Kochan experiences a flash of pain once again and then brushes off the answer, telling her that she just did not know how to understand, and that he had not really intended to outright refuse marriage—he was just too young at the time. After he blames her for marrying someone else before he was ready, Sonoko calmly expresses that she both loves her husband and wonders what a future with Kochan would have been like. Kochan accuses her of hating him when she thinks of their imagined future, and he begs her to meet with him in private. Sonoko refuses for propriety’s sake, and Kochan asks her to think more informally. They do not resolve the conversation.

Kochan is unable to understand why he wants to meet with Sonoko, as he knows clearly that he wants nothing sexual from their relationship. A year passes; he gets a job and meets with Sonoko infrequently, only in passing. When he is with her, he feels calm, however fragile the emotion might be. They begin to meet more often, approaching what might be an actual relationship, but it still is undefined and platonic. During one encounter, Kochan reveals he has quit his job, which does not interest her much. They have meaningless conversations in which it becomes clear that their trysts fulfill neither of them, nor is there room to move forward in a way that meets their needs. Sonoko reveals that their relationship is wracking her with guilt, as Kochan is beginning to occupy her thoughts and dreams instead of her husband. Kochan reassures her that guilt is not necessary. They walk, and Kochan feels despised by the happy lovers that walk past them. He and Sonoko go to a dance hall for 30 minutes, but the place is disreputable, and Kochan is ashamed. A young shirtless man with a tattoo of a peony on his chest distracts Kochan. He forgets that Sonoko is there and indulges in a fantasy of the young man getting gutted by a rival gang. When Sonoko regains his attention, he apologizes for his mistake in bringing her to the dance hall, but she brushes him off. He lies about having brought someone else to the dance hall before. They check their watches in desperation and part ways.