Imagine being called ugly on a blind date as a sort of social experiment. Then, imagine going out with him again. Within the fabric of such an absurd short story, entitled “Kaho”, that was featured in The New Yorker last month, Haruki Murakami weaves a critique of our world’s hypocritical condemnation of lookism and its simultaneous obsession with women’s appearance. The force of such a statement is all the more amplified as it stands bare in an unembellished, blunt writing style. What strikes me is how Murakami conveys complex issues such as the symbiotic bond between one’s face and one’s perception of the self, the malleability of identity, and the fluidity of beauty, all through a deceptively simple character, Kaho—the eponymous protagonist of the story and the “plainest woman” her “quirky” blind date has, purportedly, ever seen.

Syeda Fatema Rahman