The Nose

The basic premise of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “The Nose”—a Buddhist priest with an outlandishly large nose who undergoes a grotesque procedure to shorten it—is inherently humorous, if not utterly absurd. While the third-person narrator maintains a neutral tone, the humor emerges from the details, such as the wooden slat used to hold up Zenchi Naigu’s nose during meals, and the revolting globs of fat that his disciple extracts from the appendage during the procedure. The neutrality of the narrative voice highlights the seriousness with which Zenchi treats his own condition; others may laugh at it, but he is incapable of laughing at himself.

The third-person narrator attends closely to Zenchi’s inner monologue throughout the story, allowing the contradictions of the priest’s character, as well as his moments of self-delusion, to pass without explicit commentary. The opposition between external appearance and inner conditions functions as the central axis of the tale. However, this is not a case of a simple binary opposition where Zenchi’s authentic identity can be pinned down. In other words, this is not a story about a particularly vain priest, nor is it one about the process of coming to accept the inner self as more authentic than appearances.