Review of “The Savage Mouth” (1969)
Komatsu Sakyō (writer).
Read in 2020.
Read in Speculative Japan.
A man eats his own body.
Though contemporary with “The Electric Ant” (1969) and similar in setup—the individual testing its outermost limits alone—this is mainly grotesquerie. The final scene sinches it: The policeman deciding to suppress the incident for fear of imitation, or worse. The literary execution is good though.