The Self Seen Through Another

A Man

Kido and Rié use stories, images, and imagined perspectives to approach grief and identity that cannot be faced directly.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

A Writer Watches Kido A Writer Watches Kido from "A Man". A Man Seen from Behind A storyteller’s perspective The narrator introduces Kido as a man whose lies briefly disclose truths he cannot say directly.

A Writer Watches Kido from "A Man". A Man Seen from Behind A storyteller’s perspective The narrator introduces Kido as a man whose lies briefly disclose truths he cannot say directly.

A Man Seen from Behind A storyteller’s perspective The narrator introduces Kido as a man whose lies briefly disclose truths he cannot say directly. A mirror structure The image of a man looking into a mirror frames the book’s concern with observing someone who is already observing himself.

Rié Reads the Sketchbooks Rié Reads the Sketchbooks from "A Man". Pictures as an Inner Life A small body of work Rié studies X’s imperfect landscapes and recognizes an openness that has survived adulthood.

Rié Reads the Sketchbooks from "A Man". Pictures as an Inner Life A small body of work Rié studies X’s imperfect landscapes and recognizes an openness that has survived adulthood.

Pictures as an Inner Life A small body of work Rié studies X’s imperfect landscapes and recognizes an openness that has survived adulthood. Feeling before explanation The picture of the bus terminal moves her to tears before she can explain why. Art gives an indirect route into grief and memory.

Kido Inhabits the Story Kido Inhabits the Story from "A Man". Another Person’s Pain An imagined identity Kido impersonates Daisuké in a bar and discovers the exhilaration of temporarily inhabiting a stranger’s story.

Kido Inhabits the Story from "A Man". Another Person’s Pain An imagined identity Kido impersonates Daisuké in a bar and discovers the exhilaration of temporarily inhabiting a stranger’s story.

Another Person’s Pain An imagined identity Kido impersonates Daisuké in a bar and discovers the exhilaration of temporarily inhabiting a stranger’s story. A troubling pleasure The performance helps him think but raises the question of whether another person’s suffering can become his private refuge.

Hara’s Pictures Meet His Father’s

A Visual Inheritance Landscapes recur Kido recognizes that Hara’s drawings resemble Kenkichi Kobayashi’s prison paintings. Art complicates identity The resemblance links father and son without proving that they share the same character. It makes inherited fear visible without making it destiny.

Yuto’s Poem of the Shell Yuto’s Poem of the Shell from "A Man". A Voice After Leaving A cicada shell Yuto imagines how a discarded shell hears the song of the body that once lived inside it.

Yuto’s Poem of the Shell from "A Man". A Voice After Leaving A cicada shell Yuto imagines how a discarded shell hears the song of the body that once lived inside it.

A Voice After Leaving A cicada shell Yuto imagines how a discarded shell hears the song of the body that once lived inside it. A family hears him Rié understands that the poem carries grief without naming it. Literature lets her approach her son through an image he made himself.

In the prologue

During X’s first year in Town S

During his investigation

At the death-row art exhibition

The previous fall, recalled near the ending