The Nose

Throughout “The Nose,” Zenchi Naigu embodies the Buddhist truth that the source of suffering is in the self and, more specifically, a mistaken view of selfhood that emphasizes separation and absolute identity over connectedness and change. Throughout the story, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa draws attention to this connection between Zenchi’s attachment to the self—and, specifically, to his nose—and the suffering that occurs. Much of the suffering is obvious: The nose is “a constant source of torment” (52), gets in the way of the priest’s ability to eat, and keeps him from being fully present in the performance of his religious duties. He allows himself to be distracted from those duties, particularly the chanting of sacred scriptures, in favor of posing in front of a mirror, experimenting with different positions that might make his nose appear smaller. It distorts the way he reads scripture and literary texts, and, of course, it leads him to submit to the unusual and humiliating boiling/stomping procedure to make his nose shorter.

More broadly, Zenchi’s attachment to the self causes suffering by obstructing his ability to see the nature of reality—or appreciate the deep contradictions of his own position. Zenchi believes that his nose prevents him from living up to his own perception of what a Zen priest should be, but that suffering also results from an attachment to some idea of a “real” priest. Not only is he ashamed to be thinking so much about his nose when “he should be thirsting exclusively for the Pure Land to come,” he is also mortified by the possibility that other people will find out how much mental energy he expends on the protuberance. Thus, Zenchi’s nose is not only a byword in the village—“everyone in Ike-no-o knew what you were talking about” (52)—but also a source of “harm […] to his self-esteem” (53) that must be carefully concealed from those around him. His self-consciousness—and the self-imposed necessity of concealing it—manifests itself in inadvertent movements that draw further attention to his nose.

Within this context, Zenchi’s attempts to alleviate his suffering by changing his nose are also bound to fail. He discovers that having a smaller nose does not mean he is no longer subject to the ridicule of others; only the terms of the ridicule and its degree of hiddenness are altered. And while Zenchi assumes that worrying less about his nose will enable him to be a better person, he actually becomes worse. After he hits the page boy with the slat once used to hold up his nose, Zenchi reflects that “[h]is nose had been shortened all right […] but he hated what it was doing to him” (57). With his long nose or without it, Zenchi remains mired in suffering because of his attachment to the idea of a stable self.