Confessions of a Mask (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Kimitake Hiraoka
- First Published: 1949
- Type of Work: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The 1920’s to the late 1940’s
- Setting: Tokyo and its environs
- Principal Characters: Kochan, Omi, Sonoko
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Sex or sexuality, 1940’s, 1920’s, 1930’s, Obsession, Death or dying, Tokyo
- Locales: Tokyo, Japan
The Novel
Confessions of a Mask is a first-person narrative about a Japanese youth growing up from infancy to young manhood in and around Tokyo, Japan, from 1925 to about 1947. The narrator-protagonist is psychologically burdened by a sexual inversion, making him a latent homosexual. The novel deals with the manifestations of this latent homosexuality, the protagonist’s growing awareness of it, and his struggle to live with it in Japanese society. These elements are presented in four chapters of unequal length, and these chapters in turn informally comprise two...
[The entire page is 2351 words long]

