“Alright, class! We’re gonna read a story about a guy who locks himself in a hotel room with a decked-out kitchen, a surgery machine, and every prosthesis one could need, and this guy is gonna eat himself from the bottom up and describe it in careful, emotional, joyous detail!”
Yeeeeah, fuck that shit, decades later.
“The Savage Mouth” is the English title, by Komatsu Sakyou.
I have a similar reaction, but it was to “The Yellow Wallpaper”, about a woman locked in a room for a long period of time to deal with her mental health, and the solitude drives her quite insane. In quite haunting detail.
Fun historical note: many yellow paints and dyes used in that time period had some sort of neurotoxic heavy metal (probably mercury, IIRC) that actually caused or at least exacerbated symptoms of mental illness. Many of these compounds were relatively safe to use as paint in England, but when used in warmer, humid climates, they broke down and caused hallucinations as well as respiratory complications that caused the patients to be bedridden (further worsening the symptoms).
That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing! I wonder if the author knew that, or if yellow was just used a lot… (I’ve seen occasional older advice to paint kitchens yellow to make them “feel sunny”, but imho that’s not an easy color to live with. My mom had a patterned yellow antique couch that was just absolutely hideous… but it was the style at some point…)
Lead makes yellow and red paints have a wonderfully bright colour.
Many children’s toys had lead paint because of course the kids liked the brighter colours.
Kids also love to chew on toys… and the lead paint even tastes sweet. It was always a recipe for disaster.
I got pictures of the text in English, further down my comment history. CTRL-F “autocannibalism”. I don’t have any Japanese copies, that was a long time ago.
There was a Stephen King short story called Survivor Type where a doctor gets stranded on an island and eventually begins eating himself for sustenance. The story is told through the journal he keeps as he becomes more unhinged.