Masks

By Enchi Fumiko
Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter

Vintage Classics (2019)
ISBN-13: 978-0394722184

Review by Tara Jones

‘A woman’s love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge – an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation’ (p.64)

With this idea at its core, Masks asks the question: “Do women truly suffer in silence?”

Written by one of the greats of postwar Japanese literature, Enchi Fumiko, Masks is a masterfully layered dismantling of conventional ideas of female forgiveness and love. Within the novel’s brief pages, Enchi weaves a tale of buried resentment and intergenerational trauma, exposing the cost of repression inherent within patriarchal society, and the quiet, unrelenting force of female pride.

It is ironic that such a tale about female resistance be told through the eyes of two men: Ibuki, a married academic, and Mikame, a single doctor. Blinded by their competition for the affection of Yasuko, a young widower, the two men repeatedly underestimate both the intellect and malice of the women around them. This is particularly true for Yasuko’s poised and enigmatic mother-in-law Mieko, who orchestrates her will from the shadows with calculated agency. Her chilling ability to move those around her is likened throughout the novel to spirit possession, suggesting a female mysticism and connection to a world beyond. Just as Mieko’s plan unfolds with meticulous grace, so too does Enchi’s narrative. Though deeply psychological in its exploration of the complex power dynamics inherent in familial and romantic relationships, it has all the features of a good mystery. Much of the novel’s power relies on its restraints; key revelations buried in dialogue, silence and references to traditional literature and theatre. Masks reveals its secrets slowly and intentionally, with plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader intrigued.

Drawn together by their interest in spirit possession, the novel opens upon the recount of a séance experienced by Ibuki, Mikame and Yasuko. Here, Enchi immediately blurs the line between the living and the dead, the conscious and the unconscious and the real and the spiritual. Themes of folklore, mysticism and shamanism underscore the uncanny and macabre atmosphere that permeates throughout the novel, mirroring the moral degradation the reader bears witness to. This spirit possession is not merely a motif, however, but for Enchi a metaphor for the ways in which women’s trauma manifests itself. For Ibuki and Mikame, their interest in spirit possession is an academic curiosity or even sexualised fantasy. For Mieko however, it is a symbolic channelling of repressed rage and suffering, as she reveals in the only glimpse the reader gains to her thoughts; her essay on Lady Rokujo from The Tale of Genji.

Indeed, where Masks really excels is in its rich intertextuality. Invoking Lady Rokujo, Enchi draws upon past and present forms of female suffering. Furthermore, the novel is split into three acts named after female Noh masks: Ryo no Onna – the vengeful spirit of an older woman; Masugami – a woman possessed with passion; and Fukai, the face of a woman who knows revenge. Enchi reclaims and subverts these traditional female archetypes, reinterpreting signs of female power. While Masks may challenge readers unfamiliar with The Tale of Genjior Noh, this does not alienate but enrich, rewarding those who lean into its slow deliberate pacing.

Such thematic depth and rich intertextual layering is no coincidence, but rather the product of Enchi’s personal and intellectual background. Born in 1905 to a professor of linguistics and literature at Tokyo University, Enchi spent her childhood immersed in Japanese literature encompassing Noh plays, romances, ghost stories, and Kabuki theatre. Her personal experiences – early marriage to a man ten years her senior, motherhood, wartime suffering, cancer and her mastectomy – guide her writing particularly in her thematic focus on women trapped in oppressive social structures. By the time of Masks publication in 1958, Enchi was already a respected writer with her novel, The Waiting Years, and her translation of The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese. As such, Masks marks a culmination of Enchi’s literary vision, where emotional intensity and intellectual command align. It is not only a standout work but an ideal entry point into her literary oeuvre; accessible in length but rich in allusion and representative of the major themes that colour her work.

Masks is not a story of empowerment in the conventional sense – it offers no resolutions or admirable heroines. Instead, it exposes the violence of oppressive social structures, and the agency of women in not simply enduring their lot, but turning their pain into wrath. Far from a fast paced thriller, Enchi eschews spectacle for silent devastation, relying on silent brutality and the moral depravity of human behaviour, haunting through what it withholds. Deliberate, elegant and deeply unsettling, Enchi’s novel continues to resonate long after the final page.