Confessions of a Mask

“But not a single person was visible to my eyes. My frenzy was focused upon the consciousness that, through my impersonation, Tenkatsu was being revealed to many eyes. In short, I could see nothing but myself.”

This is Kochan’s first experience putting on a (literal) mask and delighting in performance, but unlike his future masks, his performance as Tenkatsu—a female figure—enables him to feel more like himself. In contrast with the Joan of Arc passage, this passage shows Kochan himself blurring the lines of gender and feeling briefly liberated by the experience, even if he soon experiences shame from his mother’s negative reaction. This passage is the novel’s only glimpse of a truly unfettered Kochan—beyond this point, he can only see himself through the lens of others and his own self-deception.

“And in this house it was tacitly required that I act like a boy. The reluctant masquerade had begun. At about this time I was beginning to understand vaguely the mechanism of the fact that what people regarded as a pose on my part was actually an expression of my need to assert my true nature, and that it was precisely what people regarded as my true self which was a masquerade.”

In this quote, Kochan explains how the external pressures of society reverse his experience of his own identity. Kochan notes the need in others, especially adults, to interpret him as “normal” by reversing his repression, implying that he has always wanted to be a “normal” boy instead of his more reserved, feminine self. By creating a mirrored dichotomy at the end of the final sentence, he makes the lines between his “mask” and his true self clear for the first time and sets up his true self as undesirable and unperformable in public.

“I was pulled up short by the flashing realization that at heart Omi was a lonely person. His smile was probably assumed in order to hide the weak spot in his armor, which my understanding had chanced upon, but this fact did not hurt me so much as it hurt the image I had been constructing of him.”

Using the common metaphor “weak spot in his armor,” Kochan finds Omi also wearing a mask, much like himself. Kochan begins to acknowledge that he is not falling in love with Omi as a real person, but as a constructed ideal. In this way, he is building a framework of falsehood not just for himself, but also for those he desires.

“Could this have been love? Grant it to be one form of love, for even though at first glance it seemed to retain its pristine form forever, simply repeating that form over and over again, it too had its own unique sort of debasement and decay. And it was a debasement more evil than that of any normal kind of love. Indeed, of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.”

The theme of purity recurs throughout the novel as Kochan struggles to bridge the gap between the desires society expects him to feel and those he actually feels. In this passage, Kochan interrogates his earliest experience with desire, concluding that his restrained, purer approach was more destructive than open lustfulness.

“I do not mean to say that I viewed those desires of mine that deviated from accepted standards as normal and orthodox; nor do I mean that I labored under the mistaken impression that my friends possessed the same desires. Surprisingly enough, I was so engrossed in tales of romance that I devoted all my elegant dreams to thoughts of love between man and maid, and to marriage, exactly as though I were a young girl who knew nothing of the world. I tossed my love for Omi onto the rubbish heap of neglected riddles, never once searching deeply for its meaning.”

The language of this passage seems to allude to the experience of being closeted, but while many closeted gay people are fully aware of their identity, Kochan instead exists in a paradox: He both acknowledges his gay desires and conceptualizes himself as socially and romantically straight. This comes back to the theme of lack of sexuality: He uses the metaphor of the “young girl” to emphasize that he does not connect sexuality into the heterosexual experiences he daydreams about.

“Might it not be that through the innermost recesses of love there courses an unattainable longing in which both the man and the woman desire to become the exact image of the other? Might not this longing drive them on, leading at last to a tragic reaction in which they seek to attain the impossible by going to the opposite extreme? In short, since their mutual love cannot achieve a perfection of mutual identity, is there not a mental process whereby each of them tries instead to emphasize their points of dissimilarity—the man his manliness and the woman her womanliness—and uses this very revolt as a form of coquetry toward the other?”

Kochan here interrogates gender roles and norms to understand desire and attraction. In this theory, relationships between men and women are defined by gender difference, as men and women in love seek to become identical, find that they cannot do so, and then instead cement their bond by emphasizing their difference from one another. In his changing relationship to the hypermasculine Omi, Kochan sees a similar dynamic.

“There was an execution factory where mechanical drills for piercing the human body were always running, where the blood juice was sweetened, canned, and put on the market. Within the head of this middle-school student innumerable victims were bound with their hands behind them and escorted to the Colosseum.”

Kochan uses contrast with his age to make his dreamscape of violence and gore more shocking. This passage additionally contrasts an image from antiquity, the Colosseum, with the image of a modern, factory-based society. This blend of modernity and antiquity is a constant theme in Kochan’s thoughts and ties to his interest in the past and the inescapable pressures of his wartime present.

“I had thought that with ‘earnestness’ (what a touching thought!) I too could escape from my childish state. It was as though I had not yet realized that what I was now disgusted with was my true self, was clearly a part of my true life; it was as though I believed instead that these had been years of dreaming, from which I would now turn to ‘real life.’”

In this passage, Kochan subverts the traditional coming-of-age narrative by revealing that he has already come of age and discovered his identity, but has been hiding from it. A common theme across queer literature is acknowledging one’s sexual orientation and desires as real rather than a “phase,” which is what Kochan realizes here. Despite this acknowledgement, however, the recurrent theme of self-hatred grows only stronger in this passage.

“By the end of childhood I was already firmly convinced that it was so and that I was to play my part on the stage without once ever revealing my true self. Since my conviction was accompanied by an extremely naïve lack of experience, even though there was a lingering suspicion somewhere in my mind that I might be mistaken, I was still practically certain that all men embarked on life in just this way.”

Kochan uses theatrical imagery to create a dramatic interpretation of his masked way of life. Whereas younger Kochan could interpret his masked identity as part of a larger game, experienced Kochan is forced to acknowledge that he is on the stage, alone, viewed by an unmasked audience.

“When a boy of fourteen or fifteen discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness.”

Kochan characterizes his past self as immature in this passage, but he also uses his immaturity to achieve new self-understanding. This passage emphasizes the difference between Kochan and the other boys without degrading one or the other; it develops the larger narrative that Kochan is living in a separate reality from his peers.

“It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied.”

This quote directly calls the habit of repression and “masking” harmful. In a moment of honesty, Kochan admits that his pride in his self-deceit only caused him to lose control of his real identity. At the same time, Kochan’s emphasis that he was a child in this sentence implies that he might not have had much choice in developing the approach to the world that he did.

“I never guessed that they could be sharply distinguished from me, not only in their inner feelings, but even in hidden external signs. I did not realize, in short, that they immediately had an erection when they saw a picture of a woman’s nude body, that I was alone in remaining unmoved at such a time.”

This passage again discusses sexuality as an absence, using Kochan’s ignorance to develop contrast between him and his peers. The sexual language in the passage is delivered candidly and without emotion, emphasizing Kochan’s disinterest. Kochan’s insistence that he is “alone” further emphasizes his experience of being gay as isolating rather than communal; he cannot conceptualize other people sharing his perspective.

“My ignorance was so profound that I did not perceive the contradiction involved here. I did not see that in my way of looking at the profile of the young bus-driver there was something inevitable, suffocating, painful, oppressive, whereas it was with rather studied, artificial, and easily tired eyes that I regarded the anemic young lady. So long as I remained unaware of the difference in these two viewpoints, both of them lived together within me without bothering each other, without any conflict.”

Kochan characterizes himself more than the people he is interested in by using contrast and irony to emphasize his lack of attraction to the anemic woman. Notably, neither experience is enjoyable, however; the language he uses for both is negative and harmful. This emphasizes the novel’s overarching implication that self-awareness is often more painful than staying repressed.

“As a result I assumed the stylish airs of an adult, of a man of the world. I affected the attitude of being completely tired of women. Thus it was that I first became obsessed with the idea of the kiss. Actually the action called a kiss represented nothing more for me than some place where my spirit could seek shelter. I can say so now. But at that time, in order to delude myself that this desire was animal passion, I had to undertake an elaborate disguise of my true self. The unconscious feeling of guilt resulting from this false pretense stubbornly insisted that I play a conscious and false role.”

This passage emphasizes that the process of putting on a mask is both internal and external. Kochan cannot fool others without fooling himself first. The symbol of the kiss reappears throughout the novel, and here he gives it meaning: an artificial, emptily romantic symbol of heterosexuality, emphasized throughout history and culture as the pinnacle of romance, and thus, easily adoptable by Kochan’s disguise.

“As I have remarked several times, the future was a heavy burden for me. From the very beginning, life had oppressed me with a heavy sense of duty. Even though I was clearly incapable of performing this duty, life still nagged at me for my dereliction. Thus I longed for the great sense of relief that death would surely bring if only, like a wrestler, I could wrench the heavy weight of life from my shoulders.”

Kochan struggles with many duties throughout the book—duty to his country and duty to marry and have children, for example. His experience of being othered and repressed causes him genuine pain and grief. This passage emphasizes a new dimension to Kochan’s relationship to death; while he enjoys the brutality and tragedy of death, he also sees it as a gentler form of release from a world that has no place for him.

“I had decided I could love a girl without feeling any desire whatsoever. This was probably the most foolhardy undertaking since the beginning of human history. Without being aware of it myself, I was undertaking to be—please forgive my natural inclination toward hyperbole—a Copernicus in the theory of love. In doing so I had obviously arrived unwittingly at nothing more than a belief in the platonic concept of love.”

Kochan’s growth and self-awareness are not yet complete. His allusion to Copernicus and “platonic” love gives this passage a contradictory sense of intelligence and philosophical thinking when Kochan is still unaware of the dissonance between his behavior and his internal self. While finally aware of his lack of desire, Kochan’s failure to approach his relationship with Sonoko honestly dooms him from the start.

“Nothing gave me such a strange feeling of repugnance as the thought of a connection between everyday life and death. Doesn’t even a cat hide itself when death approaches, so that no one may see its dying? Just the thought that I might see the cruel deaths of my family, and they might see mine, made a retching nausea rise in my chest.”

As Kochan grows older, the narrative develops death as something not just desirable, but terrifying. The love Kochan feels for his family is obscured here in the language; it is unclear if he feels disgusted because ordinary death upsets him, or because he does not want to experience their loss. While Kochan is honest with himself in other passages, here, he still is masked internally and externally; his revulsion at the thought of his family seeing him dying shows that he is still afraid of being seen at his lowest, most vulnerable moments.

“How would I feel if I were another boy? How would I feel if I were a normal person? These questions obsessed me. They tortured me, instantly and utterly destroying even the one splinter of happiness I had thought I possessed for sure.”

The theme of self-hatred is fully developed here, with Kochan identifying himself as “abnormal” and wishing to experience the world as the imaginary “normal” masses do. He is unable to view other people as anything except part of a monolith, and his awareness that he is not a part of this imagined monolith ruins his efforts at deceiving himself.

“Why were things wrong just as they were? The questions which I had asked myself numberless times since boyhood rose again to my lips. Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life? Or am I the only one for whom it is a duty?”

Kochan’s rhetorical questions emphasize how lost he feels at this point in the narrative. The repetition of his first question—which has occurred at other points in the narrative thus far—proves that he has, in many ways, not grown at all from the confused, repressed child he once was. He is once again fixated on the dichotomy between normal and abnormal, but this time, he is unsure whether his lack of joy in living is unique to him.

“These thoughts also spurred me on to the perverse resolve that I must visit Sonoko at the earliest possible moment. Could this feeling have been love? Was it not instead akin to that strange and passionate form of curiosity a man exhibits toward a fear that dwells in him, a desire to play with fire?”

The metaphor at the end of this passage shows more of Kochan’s retroactive self-awareness and thus offers foreshadowing for what is to come out of his relationship with Sonoko—mutual harm. His urge to be with Sonoko mirrors his earlier urge to “purely” watch and yearn for Omi; in both situations, his feelings are “perverse” because they are dishonest.

“As part of my system of self-discipline, dating from childhood, I constantly told myself it would be better to die than become a lukewarm person, an unmanly person, a person who does not clearly know his likes and dislikes, a person who wants only to be loved without knowing how to love.”

This passage uses irony to characterize Kochan by revealing that he is so lost in his own self-deception that he cannot even recognize the ways he has destroyed his own ideals. The dissonance between Kochan’s repressed identity and his ideals for himself finally begins to undo him and the masks he has put on. He is no truer to these ideals than he was as a child; he has just perfected the art of fooling himself.

“I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself, there's no need for me to take such decisive action myself, not when I'm surrounded by such a bountiful harvest of death—death in an air raid, death at one's post of duty, death in the military service, death on the battlefield, death from being run over, death from disease—surely my name has already been entered in the list for one of these: a criminal who has been sentenced to death does not commit suicide. No—no matter how I considered, the season was not auspicious for suicide. Instead I was waiting for something to do me the favor of killing me. And this, in the final analysis, is the same as to say that I was waiting for something to do me the favor of keeping me alive.”

For the first time in the narrative, Kochan’s love for death coincides with suicidal ideation; curiously, the former is what keeps him from acting on his grieving, isolated impulses. By accepting fate, Kochan ceases to be an actor, both metaphorically and literally; he no longer has the energy to either live or die without external pressure.

“The pain proclaimed: You’re not human. You’re a being who is incapable of social intercourse. You’re nothing but a creature, non-human and somehow strangely pathetic.”

The voice of Kochan’s self-hatred in this passage is sparked when he tries to look sexually at a woman and fails to be interested in her. Tragically, the moments in which he is most self-aware are also the moments in which he experiences the most self-hatred. He personifies his internalized anti-gay bias as a physical, speaking pain, separating it from himself even if its effects are still tangible and harmful.