Zenchi Naigu, the protagonist of the story, is a Buddhist priest in the town of Ike-no-o. Zenchi is primarily perceived through a singular physical characteristic: his grotesquely long nose. The incongruent blend of spiritual seriousness and physical peculiarity is the basis of the narrative that unfolds. Despite his efforts to maintain a facade of indifference and spirituality, Zenchi is deeply troubled by the physical and emotional implications of his distinctive feature. His attempts to cope with the challenges posed by his nose reveal a broader struggle to avoid the suffering that comes from the illusion of a self separate from others—a “self-esteem” that becomes more fragile the more he tries to strengthen it.

In keeping with this ironic reflection on selfhood, the attempts that Zenchi undertakes to make his nose less prominent have the opposite effect. Not only is he as obsessed with his nose as ever, he also finds that, if anything, people are responding to him with even more laughter than before. When Zenchi briefly succeeds in making his nose shorter, he paradoxically reveals the paranoia and vanity that he had been trying to hide. Undergoing the procedure to shorten his nose, in other words, reveals the lie in all of Zenchi’s attempts to pretend that he doesn’t care about his appearance.