The Face of Another

Mr. Okuyama, a business executive, is involved in a workplace industrial accident, which leaves his face severely burned. Rather than show his scarred face to the world, he would rather keep his entire head bandaged whenever he is in public. Although he takes some responsibility for what happened to him, he is very bitter, not so much about his face, but at the people he feels have abandoned him, including his wife. He asks his psychiatrist, Dr. Hori, to help him kill himself. Dr. Hori believes he has a more palatable alternative, albeit one that may not be ethical: Dr. Hori will create a life-like mask for him to wear, one that only a trained eye could tell is not a real face, it which would allow him to assume another identity completely. While Mr. Okuyama just wants to have some semblance of normalcy in agreeing, Dr. Hori, who is treating this process like a scientific psychological experiment, has the caveat that he wants Mr. Okuyama to report back his every action and encounter as he truly does believe that the mask will take on an identity of its own. As Okuyama goes through the growing pains of being comfortable not only wearing the mask but all that goes along with being someone else (despite his assertions that he will always be who he is), he divulges his true intention with the mask which has specifically to do with reclaiming his wife. That mission ends up having unintended consequences. A parallel, separate story is interwoven with Okuyama's, it concerning a young woman with a burn scar on the right side of her face, the scar which she generally hides by her hairstyle, and the true emotions she is dealing with regarding her disfigurement.