Masks (, Onnamen) is a novel by Japanese author Fumiko Enchi, published in 1958. An English translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter was published in 1983. Each of the novel's three sections takes its name from a type of Noh mask. Many elements of the novel were influenced by The Tale of Genji, which Enchi had earlier translated into modern Japanese.
Plot summary
The novel is split into three sections, each named for a particular noh mask: Ryō no Onna, Masugami and Fukai.
Ryō no Onna
In a coffee shop on the second floor of Kyoto station, two men, Ibuki and Mikame, discuss their mutual love interest, Yasuko Togano, her relationship with her mother-in-law Mieko and the séance in which the four had participated on the seventeenth of the previous month. The men are old friends from college and Mikame is a bachelor and practicing psychologist, whilst Ibuki is a married university professor with a wife and child. Both Yasuko and Mieko are widowed and although Yasuko's husband Akio was killed in an avalanche on Mount Fuji a year into their marriage, Yasuko chose to stay with her mother-in-law at the Togano house after his death. The four are joined by an intellectual interest in Heian era spirit possession, on the subject of which Yasuko is continuing the research begun by her husband before his death.
Ibuki is invited to join Mikame and the two women on a trip to visit the estate of the ailing noh master, Yorihito Yakushiji, and to see his collection of costumes and masks. Yasuko is particularly disturbed by the “haughty cruelty” of the Zō no Onna mask and is attended by Mikame after experiencing a dizzy spell. The old master has insisted that Mieko and the others see the Ryō no Onna mask, said to represent "the vengeful spirit of an older woman tormented beyond the grave by unrequited love”.
On the train back to Tokyo, Yasuko reveals to Ibuki that her dead husband has a twin sister, Harume, who lives with her and Mieko at the Togano household but was raised away from her brother at the home of her maternal grandparents.
Yasuko demonstrates some inclination of a romantic bent towards Ibuki but signals her intention to marry the bachelor Mikame, for fear that her true feelings are being manipulated by her scheming mother-in-law, Mieko. Ibuki urges Yasuko to get off the train with him and the pair disembark at the seaside resort of Atami, where they spend the night together.
Back in Tokyo, Ibuki receives a call from Mikame, who alerts him to the existence of an old forgotten essay, entitled The Shrine in the Fields, published by Mieko Togano shortly after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Ibuki deems the essay, which suggests that the relationship between Genji and Lady Rokujō in The Tale of Genji was far more than a passing affair, bold and somewhat over-defensive, though he finds her hypothesis intriguing. As Ibuki’s wife, Sadako, calls him to bed he asks her if she believes she could be induced to engage in spirit possession but she dismisses the idea as ridiculous.
Masugami
Yasuko has a nightmare about her husband’s death in an avalanche and is comforted by Mieko, who holds her in an intimate embrace. Yasuko questions Mieko about her intentions for her with regards Ibuki but Mieko attests her innocence, claiming that she only wants to provide for Yasuko’s happiness. Yasuko then turns her attention to the essay The Shrine in the Fields whereupon Mieko reveals that it was intended for her lover who died from a disease contracted at the front after having been conscripted to China. In a further revelation, we learn that this man is in fact the true father of Akio and Harume.
The next morning, it has snowed and Harume is singing a children’s song reminiscent of her childhood in Kanazawa. We learn that she is mentally handicapped, that her mind is like that of a child and that she cannot care for herself. After a banquet dinner that evening, Ibuki returns with Yasuko and Mieko to the Togano household. He finds himself physically drawn to Harume, not yet alert to her disability.