Trigger warnings for: suicide, pedophilia, sexual assault.
OMOI staff members and book fans Cat and Jess have a round table discussion to talk about the best-selling Japan horror-mystery novel, Strange Buildings by Uketsu. For those who have not read the book, we included a Spoiler Free section that shares our general thoughts. And there will be, of course, a Spoiler section where we deep dive into the specifics!
Be sure to pick up a copy at OMOI to follow along as we discuss this cryptic, true-crime inspired novel, and see if your predictions and speculations line up with ours!
-----
SPOILER FREE SECTION:
Cat: How did you feel about the file section being separated from the Deductions section?
Jess: I was reading the E-book version of it, so I was surprised when I saw I only have one “chapter” left but still so many pages to get through. I liked it though, that it was separated. I was curious to see if and how all the loose ends would tie up together.
Cat: They were not.
Jess: I will say though, from what I remember, it’s a stark contrast to Strange Pictures, which kind of had like a bowtie ending.
Cat: Really?
Jess: Which is why I also expected it from this, but it was nice to see a completely different take on a mystery novel from the same author.
Cat: This was my first experience reading anything from him. So I had no idea, no expectations. I didn’t even realize there was a Deductions section.
Jess: The format of this is very different from Strange Pictures. It’s not an interview format, and there is no Deduction section at all.
Cat: Ohhh!
Jess: I do like the different ways he writes. How do you feel about it?
Cat: I felt it was like Clue. Cause you’ve got your Files, then you’ve got your Deductions! There’s also a clear stopping point to think of your own deductions, you can talk about it with somebody to try and figure out what happened. So, it gives you a chance to think about it. And then you can, when you’re ready, go to the Deductions. Not that these are like, gospels, clearly…
Jess: It’s literally just some guy.
Cat: I like it though, I thought it was really fun. (I keep saying that haha.)
Jess: Would you try his other books?
Cat: I would, because I'm curious. I do like this format, I do understand why it’s popular because it's a totally different reading experience. Especially if you’re trying to get back into reading, that’s who I would recommend this book for. I would definitely recommend it to people who like true crime and mystery novels. And people who like a lot of visuals.
-----
SPOILER SECTION! We will be talking about this book in great detail!
Initial thoughts (after reading the first two chapters, or "files" as they're called in the book). Each chapter, or file, discusses a new family and a new building layout.
Jess: I'm curious to see how the stories are related, if they are. I read Strange Pictures where each chapter was related, but with this one it's a bit harder to tell since there are different families and different buildings.
Cat: So far the first two stories...are family based situations. My initial thoughts were abortion.
Jess: 😭?! Yeah, the first story was about a mom who couldn't really look at her daughter...
Cat: Yeah, when she (the daughter telling the story to the author/narrator), was like, "Oh, maybe I had a twin", I was thinking maybe there was another... what if she had another pregnancy that she terminated and she never wanted children?
Jess: Yeah, I can see that.
Cat: This is different from anything else I've read before. It feels like non-fiction, like forensic true crime, due to the interview format.
I get the sense it's not a Scooby Doo type ending where everything is gonna be okay, so my mind went dark places to fit in with the horror theme (laughs). I was thinking maybe the mom in File 1 went to get a secret black market abortion.
Jess: Yeah, they're all family situations so far it seems. Which makes sense, considering in Asian cultures people live with their families through adulthood.
Both agree.
Jess: Based on the first two files alone, my mind went to thinking the housing companies/manufacturers have more to do with the problems than we think. Could some also be related to supernatural elements?
Cat: I can see it going in a super natural direction...or it’s asbestos. Do they have weird relationships? Or is it asbestos?
Both laugh.
Cat: I will say though that the time of day, the weather, all of it affects your mood when you’re reading horror books.
Both agree. It's not your typical horror/mystery book based on the format alone, and we can definitely see why it's been so popular on the internet.
-----
File 3
Cat: File 3 was my favorite by far.
Jess: I think (in a good way), it took me out of the story because it was such a different time period.
Cat: It expanded the scope of the novel, made you think about a bigger picture. The first two are more isolated to family units, but this one expands the story in both time and space.
Jess: Yeah, no, I agree. Because this takes place decades before, you have to figure out how it fits into the puzzle piece of the story.
Cat: It’s also the first time we get a religious theme, which is why I think it interested me so much. I love religious cults. As soon as I saw “shrine”, I thought, “PENANCE”. Must be my Catholic upbringing, I guess.
Both get sidetracked talking about religion in the Korean community.
Jess: Going back to File 3, they didn’t even say why there was a random watermill there, right? (Jess doesn’t have the physical book in front of her so she’s relying on her already poor memory)
Cat: Yeah, it’s just an excerpt from an old book they threw in there. I like it ‘cause it sits in the back of your mind when you’re reading the rest of the book.
Jess: On a re-read, it encourages you to go back and forth with all the clues it reveals as it goes on…
Cat: At one point I tried drawing a floor plan he was talking about (laughs).
-----
File 4
Jess: This is the first mention of the puzzle piece that is the Hikura Homes mess…I can’t believe my initial hunch was right about the homes being a big part of it.
Cat: Yes! And the grandmother gets introduced…
Jess: When you got to this part, did you have an inkling who she was/who she ended up being in the story?
Cat: Once I had her image in mind, as I read the other ones I remembered. Cause they really emphasized that her legs were hidden and that she was wearing gloves. I was trying to figure out what was weird about this particular floor plan. She’s like sequestered in the very center but how they talked about it, “Isn’t this a dangerous spot?” I never would’ve thought of that. Isn’t that kind of a reach? Designed for potential accidents. I never would’ve gotten there on my own.
Jess: I felt that way the entire time I was reading the book. Every time the author or Kurihara brought up an idea, I thought, “How the hell did they come to these conclusions!?”
Cat: More notable that she was in the center…like a panopticon. She doesn’t ever come out. She eats alone.
Jess: And then it all comes together at the end…all the more reason to do a re-read to pick up the initial clues.
-----
File 5
Cat: Ah, the call back (from local sources) that the water mill was a murder scene.
Jess: I really like the call backs that they do from different chapters. The bird was an…interesting metaphor that they picked. I genuinely thought they meant a bird.
Cat: It really threw me off! As a reader I trusted because I was taking things at face value, but I think it’s all about taking things in perspective. It was like the 4th wall breaking because it’s really just some guy and his assumptions which is the intention because people have their own interpretations…Yeah, it’s meant to be open ended that way but I think I wanted there to be a clear, distinct sequence of events that occurred. But at the end, all you’re left with are speculations and a potentially unreliable narrator.
-----
File 6
Jess: This one was creepy…
Cat: I loved this one, because it’s another religious cult one. Back to religious cult! More of that! 🙂
Jess: The Hikura Homes president was speaking…yet another mention of the woman with no right arm and no left leg. At this point it’s like, “Who is this lady?” And all of the actual Hall of Rebirth being shaped like that. When they talked about the scene at the end where a bunch of people were speaking at a table, and there was gonna be a Part 2 of the article that never came out--
Cat: That made me mad. (both laugh). He (Uketsu) also breadcrumbs…
Jess: Yeah, it forces you to recall specific details and wonder, wait what chapter was that mentioned in.
Cat: I actually wrote notes at this specific chapter, about all my thoughts so far. (Reading notes): So far everyone is attached to Hikura Homes, religious cults, shady businesses.. I think cult members purchase homes from this company. Hall of Rebirth, the savior and the figurehead, and all the homes are meant for families to live in. All of the believers seem to be couples or parents expecting. The sleeping in the Hall of Rebirth, a symbol of death and reincarnation? That’s what I was thinking by this chapter.
Jess: So insightful. I was so confused, I didn’t get any of this when I was reading (laughs).
Cat: I also wrote that I think File 2 was a bit of Red Herring. I wrote, “Are we gonna hear more about this chapter?”
Jess: I wish we did! Especially since the other chapters were so related. I mean I guess it was at least tangentially related.
Cat: He was trying to throw us off scent. (laughs) But that’s just part of the genre.
Maybe the girl from File 4, the granddaughter, I initially thought, maybe she was the girl who was abused by the head of Hikura Homes, since there were rumours about the little girls. Which was almost true!
Jess: Yeah, you were on the nose about a lot of these things. I was not (laughs). Another gripe I had though, was that I barely got to know her mother…
Cat: Oh my god! The mother is the only unnamed character.
Jess: Yeah, and she’s kind of the heart of the entire thing. She’s the reason that the entire book exists, but we don’t really know anything about her.
Cat: We hear everyone’s perspective but hers. We only hear things about her, which was frustrating.
-----
File 7
Cat: That one was kinda sad..the abuse of the little boy…
Jess: And the uncle who ended up being his dad?!
Cat: That’s definitely his dad. Oh, this is where I drew the floor plan. Because he was getting really specific for a little boy, talking about the floor plan (laughs)
Jess: Yeah, it sounded like there was a pretty long hallway.
Cat: I was like what little boy is talking about the floor plan of a house? It’s such a little detail that it’s so convenient.
Jess: A little uncharacteristic for an 8 year old boy (both laugh)
Cat: I did find my floor plan, which I feel is pretty accurate! Sort of. I was getting there.
Jess: This is also before we knew that it would be in the shape of the lady.
Cat: It was fun. That’s the fun of these types of books. I like an interactive experience.
-----
File 8
Cat: The doll in the house..The heart of the house, never lock the door. Yeah, another religious cult member. Nobody talks like that. He’s got some issues. (both laugh).
Jess: The string phone…The fact that he jumped from his house to his neighbor’s seemed unrealistic to me.
Cat: I was like, Parkour? Are you Spiderman? Lol. But maybe the houses are actually that close together.
Jess: (Reading notes) The same man with the string phone is the same man who committed suicide in his home by himself.
Cat: Yeah, in my notes I wrote that there were definitely a lot of suicides going on. After File 8, I wrote, “Do all of these families have marital issues and affairs? The religious cult must target couples with young children or maybe just one person in a couple that is having/has had an affair. And they built the houses to make their problems go away”. Sort of! Spiritually! I was still thinking about the murder from file 2, that threw me off. I have to say, like midway through, I was having a lot of fun. The pace really picked up for me.
Jess: Cause when you start to fit more pieces into it, it’s really fun. I did not write any notes for File 8 and 9, which I think was just because I wanted to plow through the chapters to see how it would end.
Cat: The later chapters are when you really go back and think about the family dynamic, and think, “How is this relevant?” This is where I was writing that the way that this “author” seems to be getting his information seems like an unethical gray area (laughs). Cause this is where he’s lying about the reason that he's interviewing them. And then he gets caught!
Jess: Slightly embarrassing when he gets caught. The character called him out immediately.
Cat: He said he wasn’t gonna turn it into a gossip column. (points to book) What’s this, then?
Both laugh.
Cat: That was kind of the 4th wall breaking for me, where I was like, “Oh, now I’m thinking about what the narrator’s motivations are”
Jess: Which was interesting in general, the interview format. The entire thing in general feels like the 4th wall breaking. It makes it feel like it’s non-fiction.
Cat: You’re taking it for granted, assuming that everyone is telling the truth. And then when you get to this point, you kind of have suspicions. After this you’re like, I don’t know if I trust anyone who said anything anymore. Which is a little frustrating, but then it’s kind of fun. I guess that’s the theme here.
Jess: I liked the kid’s perspective, when the housefires happened. Because they were from a child’s perspective, I don’t wanna say it was like “innocent”, but their viewpoints hadn’t been, essentially muddled by a religious cult like most of the adults in this.
Cat: They were just kinda talking to each other and trying to figure out what was going on in their life, it felt more earnest.
Jess: Even the girl who had the friend over, her perspective unfortunately was different because she had been tied up with the cult.
Cat: I wrote, “What are the author/narrator’s motivations? Is he just a true crime journalist who has to get the info he wants so his stories sell?”
Jess: He does mention his other books a lot in this novel alone..
Cat: What is he doing with these findings other than publishing in the text that we’re reading? You’re not really an altruistic guy, unnamed author! But, I think that was the point of this. To give us perspective into who you can really trust. And then everyone’s narration is what they think happened.
-----
File 9/10
Jess: The brothel one..
Both sigh.
Jess: Reading it makes sense why they had the rule of one adult with one child that wasn’t their own.
Cat: Yeah, I would not have put those two together, that it was the children. I guess there were hints of it, that everyone there had a child. And that the price was unusually high…
Jess: It was also weird when they tried justifying the Hikura Homes guy and the daughter’s age difference. Do you remember that sentence? It was just one, but it stuck out so much to me.
Cat: Yes! I wrote in the margins there. When Akemi is talking about the guy and says, ‘He struck me as a real piece of shit, the kind of man who would use daddy’s money to buy a woman. Not an ounce of life in him. A disgusting pervert, he was,’ I literally wrote, “Why do I feel like he’s a pedophile?”
Jess: Just that description alone… There were definitely hints, but it still caught me off guard when the entire brothel was that way.
----
File 11
Jess: They mentioned the doll again.
Cat: That’s when they start talking about renovations. I think these floor plans start to resemble the shape of the body. Crazy.
Jess: And this is the hidden room. The magnet.
Cat: What do you mean you thought you should get a magnet? Are you a career detective?
Jess: Another reach, kind of on the nose.
Cat: The only thing that slightly pointed at it was his father is a product designer for a metals company, and he thinks they do something with rare earth elements. I was like, this is really convenient. Why do the rooms need to be secret rooms, though?
Jess: Yeah, it all just falls together perfectly. Maybe to protect the “heart” of the home? I guess cults in general love secrets.
Cat: Going back to the shape of the buildings, what was the shape of these buildings from the outside?
(both laugh).
Jess: I was kind of thinking too much into it, cause Japan kind of doesn’t have the land space for all of these oddly shaped homes.
Cat: For like, 3 to 4 generations, too. So that was the end of the Files before we talk about Kurihara’s Deductions.
Cat: How did you feel about the file section being separated from the Deductions section?
Jess: I was surprised, because I didn’t realize the deductions would be so long. I was reading the E-book version of it, so when I saw I only have one “chapter” left but still so many pages to get through. I liked it though, that it was separated. I was curious to see if and how all the loose ends would tie up together.
Cat: They were not.
Jess: I will say though, from what I remember, it’s a stark contrast to Strange Pictures, which kind of had like a bowtie ending.
Cat: Really?
Jess: Which is why I also expected it from this, but it was nice to see a completely different take on a mystery novel from the same author.
Cat: This was my first experience reading anything from him. So I had no idea, no expectations. I didn’t even realize there was a Deductions section.
Jess: The format of this is very different from Strange Pictures. It’s not an interview format, and there is no Deduction section at all.
Cat: Ohhh!
Jess: I do like the different ways he writes about it. How do you feel about it?
Cat: I felt it was like Clue. Cause you’ve got your Files, then you’ve got your Deductions! There’s also a clear stopping point to think of your own deductions, you can talk about it with somebody to try and figure out what happened. So, it gives you a chance to think about it. And then you can, when you’re ready, go to this Deductions. Not that these are like, gospels, clearly…
Jess: It’s literally just some guy.
-----
Kurihara's Deductions:
[Redacted section] Gets distracted talking about how they have noticed cults are common in East Asian cultures.
Cat (about cults): That’s what happens when you don’t have third spaces.
Both laugh.
Cat: The deductions…took a couple turns. Like, he said one thing and then went back and said maybe it wasn’t that outcome, but this new one instead. So he was still kind of sorting it out, it wasn’t final deductions.
Jess: I’m curious if this guy (Kurihara) was mentioned in other Uketsu books. Because in this one we don’t really get an introduction to him, at least not that I remember. We get one sentence of the author saying, "This guy is my friend." But that’s kind of it.
Cat: I thought he was a recurring character?
Jess: He could have been in Strange Houses...
Jess: One thing I wrote down about Yaeko, “It does seem that people considered with unusual bodies have mystical powers”. I thought that was really interesting…that they specifically pointed that out. But in the end it just ended up being her daughter’s revenge, being forced to show off her body.
Cat: I thought that was crazy. It was crazy to me that they took a story about powerful men who are pedophiles, and then they turned it into a revenge story against her mom. Like, you’re not mad at your husband, the pedophile?
Jess: Right, right, right.
Cat: I know that trauma can make you act in ways that don’t “make sense”, or the most justified source of anger, or whatever. But that was crazy. Not that every book needs to have a moral lesson or anything, but I was like, what was the message of this book? Because it felt to me that what was really emphasized was this, like, crazy revenge story about this girl who was abused when she was young. And like what she did and what she made her husband do, and how she controlled everyone in her life…which downplayed--
(Both): downplayed the abuse she faced as a child.
Cat: Even though that was the root cause of everything that she did, you really feel like you never…
Jess: The fact that you never get to hear her side of the story. She’s the only character that we don’t hear about, really, even though she’s the heart of the story. Is she still alive? We don’t know.
Jess: There were a few parts in the deductions where I was getting a bit confused cause they were basically rapid-fire throwing information at you.
Cat: There’s also just a lot of names to remember. Several generations’ worth. The family tree was helpful.
Jess: (once again) I wish they talked more about the kid who murdered his whole family…and Yaeko’s daughter.
Cat: I know, like what happened? I just don’t understand, if that was your experience…Is it because her life was so fraught because she was born of an affair and her mother was born out of an affair, that she wants to punish people who have affairs and create these children who are like, bound to live unhappy lives? Why start this cult to show off your mother’s body that she’s ashamed of? And then after that, she’s just hidden away with her grandmother…Why was the granddaughter living in the house with the grandmother? That makes it sound like she’s ostracized from the family, rejected.
Jess: I think it was when she (the granddaughter) mentioned she began speaking out during press interviews and it upset the father. And she mentioned she lied about the abuse from the family chef?
Cat: Ohh, right, because they were basically using her as a pawn and she didn’t wanna do it anymore. So they were like, “you’re going to be exiled.”
Jess: When I got done reading the book, I searched it up on Reddit, as one does.
Cat: I actually resisted. I really wanted to, but I resisted.
Jess: I did because people were talking about the plot holes. And they mentioned a few things that I was still curious about myself after having finished the book, like Mitsuko taking her friend up at 5AM to play cards…and manga for “poor people”. It was such a big plot in the friend’s story, but not Mitsuko’s.
Jess: Poor granny…
Cat: Yeah, we only heard about her past perspective with the other woman who was at the brothel.
Jess: I felt bad for her. It’s a tough situation because of what happened to her daughter.
Cat: I imagine it’s like, you don’t realize that that's the situation until you’re in it, and then you can’t leave. I’m sure she thought she would be the one to do it, not her daughter. She was only in that position because she was working for a wealthy man, she wasn’t independently wealthy herself. She was an employee of this wealthy man and they had an affair. And even Yaeko’s mother had an affair too. She was just like, really screwed from the beginning. All of these women are screwed over by men and then they take their revenge on other women, it seems like.
Jess: I feel like…that’s very common in East Asian stories in a lot of ways… If I’m reading a manga or watching a drama, similar things happen.
Cat: I also didn’t like the narrative that she knew he was a pedophile because she was abused by him, so she has power over him. Because that secret got out, and nothing really happened.
Jess: Yeah, he was able to get Hikura Homes back in good shape. It took some time, but there weren't really any consequences.
Cat: He’s probably just like generally speaking, a loser. Not really a strong personality to begin with.
Jess: What were your concluding thoughts?
Cat’s deductions: So. Pedophilia and extramarital affairs were the root cause of an evil that put all of this in motion. But somehow, the mastermind villain is the victim of child abuse and pedophilia. It’s like a revenge story. And instead of hating her husband, she hates her mother and uses her husband and daughter to murder her via the floor plans. Cause she also uses her own daughter to kill her mother!
Jess: Yeah, she also tells the husband to direct the daughter. She doesn’t go to the daughter herself.
Cat: She tells her husband to tell her daughter to kill her mother. It’s like, girl. What’s going on? And we’ll never know! Because we never see her perspective and she’s unnamed. And then File 2. What was the point? And then Yaeko…I think in the end, you just kinda feel bad for her. But nothing is super clear or confirmed. It’s like, “Maybe this happened”. She went through all of that abuse in her lifetime and all of the lies of her adopted parents, she ended up having to work in a brothel with her daughter, but she was being held hostage there because you can’t really leave without killing somebody else’s child, your friend’s child is also at risk. And so she had nobody in her life that loved her and that she cared for, except for her granddaughter. And her granddaughter was used as a pawn to kill her.
Jess: In the beginning, she was kind of speaking sweetly about her grandmother. That they would do all of these things together. Towards the end, she was very much like, “It was my life or hers”.
Cat: That was the only “healthy” relationship, but it was one sided as well. So she never really got a chance to experience real love in her lifetime. Except for her real parents, even though it was a result of an affair, and then she was kidnapped and her mother was left to starve. She’s the ultimate tragic figure of this…yeah, she was doomed from the start.
Jess: The son from the restaurant, the other kid from the brothel who tried to commit suicide and jumped in front of a car, she pushed him out of the way and that’s how she lost her leg. That was another relationship that she cared about, as if he was her child too.
Cat: She really cared about him, and she cared about his mother. That’s probably her only genuine friendship.
Jess: I did not know this book was gonna turn out like this.
Cat: Me neither!
-----
Jess: Would you try his other books?
Cat: I would, because I'm curious. I do like this format, I do understand why it’s popular because it's a totally different reading experience. Especially if you’re trying to get back into reading, that’s who I would recommend this book for. I would definitely recommend it to people who like true crime and mystery novels. And people who like a lot of visuals.
Thus concludes the first OMOI Book Club Talk: Strange Buildings by Uketsu. Thank you for making it to the end! This is our first time trying out this new format.