Kaho's Face-seeking Journey
Kaho by Haruki Murakami Translated, from the Japanese, by Philip Gabriel Source and Credit : newyorker.com A long time passed as she walked everywhere, examining countless faces as she went, yet she never found her own face. What she saw were always the faces of others. She didn’t know what to do. And before she knew it she was no longer a girl but an adult woman. Would she never be able to find her own face again She fell into despair. As she was sitting at the tip of a cape in a northern land, crying in utter hopelessness, a tall young man in a fur coat appeared and sat down beside her. His long hair gently waved in the wind from the sea. The young man gazed into her face and, smiling broadly, said this: “I’ve never seen a woman with such a lovely face as yours.” By then, the face she’d pasted on had become her true face. All sorts of experiences, all kinds of emotions and thoughts, had joined together to create her face. This was her face, and her face alone. She and t