The Face of Another

An industrial accident leaves Okuyama severely scarred and hidden behind bandages. The injuries isolate him from his wife and colleagues and begin to hollow out his sense of self.

Okuyama meets a psychiatrist who recognizes the depth of his frustration and the hollowed self beneath the disfigurement. The session marks the start of a turning point toward a radical path of treatment and self-exploration.

The psychiatrist proposes an audacious experiment: design a prosthetic mask to restore normalcy, even if it risks rewriting his identity. A cash payment of 10,000 yen is offered to a willing model to fund the project.

The mask is fashioned to slip over Okuyama's scarred features, transforming the man who looks back in the mirror. The doctor asks him to chronicle his sensations as the device begins to blur the line between reality and performance.

Okuyama conceals the mask, moves into a nearby apartment, and tells his wife that he is traveling on business. The deception becomes a daily experiment in disguise.

Under the mask, Okuyama passes unseen as a secretary at his own company, testing whether the disguise can function in ordinary life. The anonymity fuels a troubling sense of power and detachment.

He later appears as the apartment building's superintendent's daughter, a deception that others do not notice. A single resident recognizes him, highlighting the fragility of identity.

The psychiatrist imagines a future where the mask goes into mass production, erasing traditional notions of morality and leaving society to wear the same altered face. This dystopian forecast warns of a world where appearances are crafted and individual conscience becomes optional.

Empowered by his new visage, Okuyama seduces his wife. She reveals she has known his true identity from the start and refuses to forgive the deception.

The psyche’s fragility culminates as Okuyama attempts to assault a woman on the street, an act that provokes legal trouble and exposes the fragility of his control. He ends up in police custody as a result.

Okuyama's release hinges on the psychiatrist's testimony that he is the doctor’s patient and not a criminal, plus a police report from the mask's creator. The authorities buy into the narrative of harmlessness.

That night, they walk a city where everyone wears a mask, pondering the device's power and its costs. The psychiatrist contemplates reclaiming the device but ultimately chooses to let Okuyama keep it, granting him dangerous freedom.

The handshake between them turns deadly when Okuyama stabs the psychiatrist, ending their collaboration and unleashing the mask's darker consequences. The act marks the collapse of their fragile ethics.

The film also threads a separate, haunting arc from Abe’s novel about a young woman with a scar on her cheek and neck. She works in a psychiatric ward and lives with her brother, haunted by memories of war and Nagasaki.

In the seaside sequence, she dresses in white, removes her shoes, and wades into the ocean, suggesting a potential suicide. Her brother’s anguished cry from the inn window lingers as a counterpoint to the main plot’s shocks.