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お前の死因にとびきりの恐怖を
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December 2, 2025
granted that i kinda get what nashi was trying to get at with the whole だから、あなたの自殺はきっと間違っていません。 dedication at the end, THAT DOESN’T MEAN I WANTED TO READ A WHOLE META BOOK ABOUT HORROR INSTEAD OF A HORROR BOOK.
Broski the fuck I wasted time on this bullshit
//
I’m so tired of this book that I can’t even make jokes about it. But I want to read horror, not meta-horror about “how” horror stories are born and the real fear is how society doesn’t understand teenagers. I’m also not interested in debating the ethics of suicide in the sense that I’m likely to come down on one side — I get tired too, and sometimes, when the world just keeps coming and won’t stop, I think, “Fine. Then I will.” But I can extend understanding or at least empathy to those who were left behind.
I picked up this book to read a scary story, and the only scary thing about this book is how fucking goddamn boring it is. Even in English I don’t care to struggle through very nearly stream-of-consciousness prose, much less in Japanese, and goddamn this book has that in spades.
We have two teenagers with rough home lives. The two of them, as sad souls do, find a kind of connection with each other, being drawn to horror — because when you’re afraid, really afraid, it at least overwrites everything else, and you think and feel nothing else.
Again, no ghosts. It starts out with the premise that oh, someone left this USB with mysterious documents about school hauntings. The discoverer of the USB tries to discover the USB’s ~provenance (so to speak). So in the beginning it looked like the narrator was going to go down the same dark path and discover the same ghosty horrors as whoever left the collection of documents. But nah. Let me spoil it for you as best as I can given that I just went through the final 2-3 chapters without bothering to look up difficult kanji.
This book falls flat because it feels like what Nashi really wanted to do was write about the conflicting feelings of family and friends left behind by those who have completed suicide — relief that it’s over, anger at what they’ve done, grief at their loss, happiness that they’re at least at peace wherever they are. But Nashi began this by framing the book like it’s found footage horror in book form with a matching Google drive you can access to read files that were in the USB, or whatever. And Nashi ends up not delivering any horror, only, again, a kind of meta commentary on how horror is born, how people profiteer off death, the ethics of suicide, the reactions of those left behind.
I mean, on the back cover of Nashi’s book it says:
So is it a sort of wry self-reflection that Nashi literally used their friend’s death as part of what inspired this book? Because this is literally the narrator’s point — they’re trying not to blame Yuuma for his death, only acknowledging that he wanted to die, and in the end he accomplished what he wanted to do.
In Nashi’s attempt to cover way too much ground, the book ended up being about not much of anything at all — for me — and not being very engaging either as a horror story or as a story of someone who’s struggling through multiple traumas. Honestly, though, if Nashi hadn’t buried the lede on the latter, and come straight out that this was about that kind of reflection, I wouldn’t have picked this up. That said, because this was such a shit experience, I’m not going to pick up any of Nashi’s other books. FUCK YOU, NASHI.
Aside — I’ve finished three non-BL Japanese books this year, 2025. All of them struck out.
➡ お前の死因にとびきりの恐怖を — I wanted horror not meta about horror or a reflection on trauma disguised as fake horror
➡ たてもの怪談 — I hate Kamon. I hope she dies in a place without good fengshui
➡ 謎の香りはパン屋から — probably the least of the strike-outs as it was at least vaguely entertaining, but not really all that fun either
Broski the fuck I wasted time on this bullshit
//
I’m so tired of this book that I can’t even make jokes about it. But I want to read horror, not meta-horror about “how” horror stories are born and the real fear is how society doesn’t understand teenagers. I’m also not interested in debating the ethics of suicide in the sense that I’m likely to come down on one side — I get tired too, and sometimes, when the world just keeps coming and won’t stop, I think, “Fine. Then I will.” But I can extend understanding or at least empathy to those who were left behind.
I picked up this book to read a scary story, and the only scary thing about this book is how fucking goddamn boring it is. Even in English I don’t care to struggle through very nearly stream-of-consciousness prose, much less in Japanese, and goddamn this book has that in spades.
We have two teenagers with rough home lives. The two of them, as sad souls do, find a kind of connection with each other, being drawn to horror — because when you’re afraid, really afraid, it at least overwrites everything else, and you think and feel nothing else.
Again, no ghosts. It starts out with the premise that oh, someone left this USB with mysterious documents about school hauntings. The discoverer of the USB tries to discover the USB’s ~provenance (so to speak). So in the beginning it looked like the narrator was going to go down the same dark path and discover the same ghosty horrors as whoever left the collection of documents. But nah. Let me spoil it for you as best as I can given that I just went through the final 2-3 chapters without bothering to look up difficult kanji.
This book falls flat because it feels like what Nashi really wanted to do was write about the conflicting feelings of family and friends left behind by those who have completed suicide — relief that it’s over, anger at what they’ve done, grief at their loss, happiness that they’re at least at peace wherever they are. But Nashi began this by framing the book like it’s found footage horror in book form with a matching Google drive you can access to read files that were in the USB, or whatever. And Nashi ends up not delivering any horror, only, again, a kind of meta commentary on how horror is born, how people profiteer off death, the ethics of suicide, the reactions of those left behind.
I mean, on the back cover of Nashi’s book it says:
※以降の文章は読まなくても構いません
八章「REMEMBER」
二〇二〇年七月に遺言もなく死んでしまったRさんへ
だから、あなたの自殺はきっと間違っていません。
So is it a sort of wry self-reflection that Nashi literally used their friend’s death as part of what inspired this book? Because this is literally the narrator’s point — they’re trying not to blame Yuuma for his death, only acknowledging that he wanted to die, and in the end he accomplished what he wanted to do.
「分かってないのはどっちだよ。私は、自殺それ自体の肯定なんて一回もしてない。あいつが自殺したいって思って、やり遂げた意志を肯定してるだけだ」
…
「やっと死ねたんだねって、褒めてやることもできないのかよ。お前は」
…
「お前は、お前らは、それすら許してくれないのかよ。あいつが最後に自分の意志で頑張ったことを、あなたのしたことは間違ってます残念でしたって、そんな」
In Nashi’s attempt to cover way too much ground, the book ended up being about not much of anything at all — for me — and not being very engaging either as a horror story or as a story of someone who’s struggling through multiple traumas. Honestly, though, if Nashi hadn’t buried the lede on the latter, and come straight out that this was about that kind of reflection, I wouldn’t have picked this up. That said, because this was such a shit experience, I’m not going to pick up any of Nashi’s other books. FUCK YOU, NASHI.
Aside — I’ve finished three non-BL Japanese books this year, 2025. All of them struck out.
➡ お前の死因にとびきりの恐怖を — I wanted horror not meta about horror or a reflection on trauma disguised as fake horror
➡ たてもの怪談 — I hate Kamon. I hope she dies in a place without good fengshui
➡ 謎の香りはパン屋から — probably the least of the strike-outs as it was at least vaguely entertaining, but not really all that fun either
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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