Pathway to Japanese Literature
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| Original Title | 顔 |
|---|---|
| Author | 岸田 国士 |
| Genre | Popular Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In a desolate seaside hotel during early spring, an eclectic group of guests and staff navigate unspoken tensions beneath the veneer of polite conversation. A middle-aged man and younger woman, their relationship ambiguously intimate yet detached, exchange veiled barbs about their isolated surroundings. The hotel’s head maid, Suganuma Rui—a woman haunted by sixteen years at sea—reveals fragments of her past: a traumatic encounter with an anonymous stoker, her longing for connection, and her wistful nostalgia for life aboard ships. Meanwhile, Madam Tsuchiya Sonoko, a sharp-tongued guest with aristocratic airs, engages in cryptic exchanges with Kyōno Seiichi, a young man convalescing at the hotel, whose casual cruelty masks deeper curiosities. As evening deepens, secrets simmer—Rui’s confession of vulnerability, the man’s possible recognition of her from his own shrouded history, and Madam’s enigmatic allusions to familial ties. Against the backdrop of crashing waves and a phonograph’s fading melodies, alliances shift, memories resurface, and the line between truth and performance blurs in this atmospheric tale of loneliness, identity, and the ghosts of choices unmade. |
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