The Substitute Body

The Substitute Body is a science fiction novel by Japanese author Sōsuke Yamada, following his earlier works The Life of Matsuko Kawajiri, Despised and Condemned, and The Hundred-Year Law. The Chinese edition was translated by Zhao Jianxun and published in September 2019 by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House as part of the "Duke Foreign Fiction Library." The story is set in near-future Japan. The medical world has invented an artificial body capable of housing a consciousness—the "substitute body." Originally designed as a temporary vessel for the severely injured or seriously ill, it allows a patient's consciousness to be transferred into the substitute body and continue working and living while the real body remains in the hospital receiving treatment. The technology is hailed as an epoch-making breakthrough in medical history and has given rise to a licensed profession: the "substitute body adjuster." The protagonist, Hatta Teruaki, is one such adjuster. One day, the real body of one of his clients suddenly dies, while the substitute body the client was operating vanishes without being recovered. In the course of his investigation, Hatta discovers that a group of "substitute-body dependents" has long existed: people who abandon their original bodies and continually switch substitute bodies in an attempt to achieve immortality, with some even dragging healthy people into this underground chain. As the investigation deepens, Hatta also stumbles upon a secret plan pushed by the government, and a crisis threatening all of humanity gradually takes shape. The novel advances its suspense through a first-person perspective while posing a philosophical question: when consciousness exists independently of the body, is the person carried by the "substitute body" still the same self as before? Is the immortality we have sought since ancient times merely the dissolution of self-identity?