Masayuki Ishii struggled with the stigma of being born with a large red bruise on the right side of his face until he read the novel “The Face of Another” when he was 20.

He highlighted various sections of the book, which he read over and over, with a red pen.

“At the time, I also thought no one would understand my suffering,” said Ishii, 54. “I thought it was a novel that describes the solitude of people like us who repeatedly question themselves about their faces.”

In "The Face of Another," published in 1964, author Kobo Abe explored such questions as what does a face mean to a person, and does it affect them psychologically or their relationships with others?

The protagonist is left with a keloid scar across his face like a “leech” after an accident. “How ugly!” the man laments.

He tries to reassure himself, saying that the face is “merely a container.” But he is frightened by how others see him while he becomes deprived of a sexual relationship with his wife.

Then he turns to a prosthetic mask to disguise his identity and seduce his wife in an attempt to regain his lost relationship and himself.

In society today, there are people such as Ishii who have blemishes not found on “normal faces” due to sickness or accidents. Such imperfections vary, including deformities, bruises, paralysis and alopecia.

In Abe’s novel, the man has his face covered in bandages to hide the scar until he wears the mask.

Shizuka Kawayoke, 44, who lives in Toyama Prefecture, has had more than 40 surgeries for arteriovenous malformation that left her with deformities of her nose and mouth. She wears a surgical mask when she goes out in public.

“There is a comfort in keeping my face from being seen,” Kawayoke said. “I’m scared to take it off.”

In many cases, women who lost their hair wear wigs, while those who have bruises on their faces wear makeup to hide them.

Yuka Kanbara, 26, is an albino, so she has white hair and skin. When she had trouble with people in the past, she thought that her appearance might be the cause.

“I can understand how the protagonist feels when he blames his looks if things go wrong,” Kanbara said.

At the end of the novel, there is an episode in which a woman who has suffered burns to her face apparently from an atomic bombing drowns herself. It is suggestive of the so-called “Hiroshima Maidens,” or women who were treated for keloid scars in the United States in 1955.

MAKING IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE

In 1964, the same year that "The Face of Another" was published, the Civil Rights Act was enacted in the United States, which prohibited discrimination based on race. The novel’s protagonist claims that although discrimination against black people can be a social matter, his agony remains on a “personal level” and that it is “impossible” for all those concerned to stand up against discrimination.

But Ishii tore down the impossibility. In 1999, 35 years after “The Face of Another” came out, he published “Ganmen Hyoryu-ki” (Chronicle of drifting face) in which he shared his own experiences of discrimination. He received two boxfuls of letters, most of which were sent from people tormented by similar agonies.

That year, Ishii founded a self-help organization for people with facial deformities called "Unique Face." He alleged that it was discriminatory for people with appearance-related symptoms to be stared at, suffer from bullying at schools and have trouble getting jobs.

“There was a growing sense of human rights thanks to experiences and results accumulated through campaigns advocating for people with disabilities, ‘buraku’ people who faced discrimination mainly over their 'impure' occupations during the feudal era and others, and the society was ready to devote attention to minor issues of discrimination,” Ishii said.

DIFFICULTIES BROUGHT BY SOCIETY

Unique Face’s activities were referred to as a “new movement,” raising expectations not only among organizations for disabled people but also among researchers, according to Yasuo Yabuki, 39, an assistant professor at Rikkyo University specializing in disability studies. Yabuki is albino himself.

Yabuki said that the establishment of Unique Face in 1999 coincided with a time when disability studies, which developed in Europe and the United States, started becoming widespread in Japan. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the so-called “social model,” under which it is considered that disabled people face hardships not because they have disabilities but because of the barriers in society.

“They claimed that it was not their looks that should be blamed but it was society’s prejudice that was problematic, which resonated well with disability studies,” Yabuki said.

As an organization, Unique Face lost momentum partly due to financial issues in the late 2000s. But a nonprofit organization called "My Face, My Style" has renamed the concept “mitame mondai” (lookism), making efforts to raise awareness about the matter.

Twenty years after Ishii made his accusation, the agonies of those concerned have become widely known. But there is still a way ahead to eliminate discrimination. Our society still forces men to wear masks.

‘NOT YOUR FAULT THAT IT IS HARD TO LIVE’

In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, writer Naocola Yamazaki, 41, talked about how she coped with being called “ugly.”

* * * * * * *

When I made my debut as a novelist in 2004, an “ugly-looking headshot” of mine taken by a newspaper company spread over the internet.

I became a target of hideous defamation and sexual insults. I felt like they were trying to say: “Ugly people should know how they look and stay hidden.”

I’m unattractive. I think so myself. But that doesn’t mean I deserve to be discriminated against.

When I asked my close circle for advice, they told me I should change my consciousness, saying that I wasn’t ugly and that I shouldn’t worry about that. When I read books about one's appearance, they were all about how to look beautiful. I felt uncomfortable with the idea that it was the unattractive ones who must change.

It was around that time when I read a book by Teruaki Fujii, who has a swelling on his face, about “body dysmorphic disorder,” and I was saved because I thought that there was nothing wrong in being unattractive. If people with appearance-related symptoms are stared at and have difficulties in finding jobs and marrying, then we need to change how our society works and its mood. Likewise, if they find it hard to live because of their unattractiveness, it’s not their fault but it’s society that is to blame.

We live in a time where we can learn that there are a wide variety of appearances via the internet. There is also a trend in which people make use of their unique looks and body shapes to dress up in a positive manner. I wait in anticipation that lookism will be less pervasive. Meanwhile, there are people who are not too interested in beauty, like myself. I hope people appreciate my choice of not making efforts, saying, “It is OK to remain unattractive.”