Bone Ash

by Tow Ubukata, Kevin Gifford (Translator)

Mitsuhiro Matsunaga is an investor relations manager at a large development firm that’s currently in the process of constructing a new high-rise building. After claims surface online of fires breaking out, illness spreading, and human bones unearthed at the site, he ventures there himself to find out whether there’s any truth to the rumors. During his search, he detects an eerie dryness, and the distinct smell of a person burned completely to ash, bones and all. Eventually, Mitsuhiro stumbles across a mysterious ritual space with a huge hole not on any blueprints—and inside it, a man in chains. Mitsuhiro flees above ground in a panic, only to quickly learn that this is but a taste of the terror that has begun to plague him and his family!

Genres: Horror

352 pages, Hardcover

First published December 9, 2022

About the author

UBUKATA Tow: 冲方 丁

He used to live in Nepal and Singapore. His favorite movie directors are: Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Lars von Trier and Guy Ritchie.

Reviews

[Lanie Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mitsuhiro Matsunaga is called to work early one morning to check on some reports of dangerous activity regarding a building his company is in charge of construction surfacing on Twitter. There are only five of these tweets but each is more damning than the last, the final one stating that human remains were found on site. Mitsuhiro arrives and waves off offers of assistance from the men on duty, they had been working all night and he didn't think these claims would amount to anything. As he goes further and further underground he begins to feel weird, the air is dry almost like there had been a fire recently, which was one of the claims and yet he's found nothing alarming. He easily crosses the first few locations off of his list but is confused as to where the last two could be. There really isn't any other places the photos that appeared online could have been taken but determined to do a thorough job he is surprised when he finds a door that according to the blueprints shouldn't be there. He follows a series of staircases further underground and arrives at a perfectly square room and in the middle is a perfectly square hole with a man chained inside. Mitsuhiro immediately unchains the man unknowing that he has just invited hell into his own home.

Oh wow, I genuinely don't even know where to start with this. It was simply incredible! It was terrifying from almost the beginning to the end with an ending that had me crying which was extremely unexpected! Not to mention a very insightful discussion about homelessness and how easily any one of us can find ourselves and our families unhoused.

In all honesty, this whole story really revolves around this whole idea of homelessness (I will circle back to this after we discuss the elderly portion) and the decline of support structures for the elderly in Japan. The elderly man, Yoshikazu Hara, who Mitsuhiro finds chained in the hole in the beginning of the book turns out to be an unhoused man who, after having to sell everything he owns to put his wife who has dementia in a care facility volunteers to become a mi-keshi (a ritual that sometimes uses human sacrifice in this case Hara supposedly will only be in this hole for a set amount of time and then replaced with a doll made in his likeness) to appease a water god, even though he himself is now experiences symptoms of the same thing that is killing his wife. Mitsuhiro is honestly kind of a jerk about this at first and to be fair given that his job is to ensure that no scandals arise regarding this construction, it makes sense. But moreover it makes sense because his attitude is basically everyone's attitude when it comes to the homeless. Even after being informed that there is very little way this man is making a decision while in right mind as far as Mitsuhiro is concerned the man volunteered and that's all that matters, his company has a clear conscious. Now, because this is Japanese there's kind of a next level to this because of a practice called Ubasute that as far as I am aware is a mythical practice found in folklore. So this idea of an elderly person being willing to sacrafice themselves for the greater good in Japan is known. And considering what the hell is lurking at the bottom of that hole, I can 100% see Hara being like, "Yup, this has to stay in this hole by any means necassary." Old or not. However, I think for Westerners this is just not something we like to even think about even though yeah we do sacrafice our elderly in a million ways every day. As a white woman living in a multi-generational household in America you would not believe the looks I get when I tell other white people that. Our society believes that our elderly should stand on their own two feet whether we say it out loud or not. Granted, I am seeing a shift in these attitudes recently this is because quite frankly no one can afford to live alone right now. So for me on that level this was a near and dear to my heart topic.

The unhoused question plays a very large role in this book as I said earlier and I don't even think that Mitsuhiro's descent into madness brought on by whatever the hell is in the bottom of that hole is a metaphor for mental health issues amongst the unhoused, it's just a straight up "Wake up this could be you!" Mitsuhiro straight up says at one point that he realized now how quickly one can go from everything to nothing. From the beginning there are hints that he does have some anxiety issues but it doesn't seem that bad, nothing that most working adults don't deal with. But as the story goes on, especially after he talks on the phone with his mom which is pretty late in the book, it's fairly obvious that may not be the case. He also seems to have some serious issues with asserting himself in a postive manner that adds to this anxiety. And while granted yes there's an evil spirit pretty much possessing him, Mitsuhiro's story could be one of any unhoused persons without access to mental health care. What's more as the Mitsuhiro gets worse he begins to prey upon the homeless population another very serious issue. We've all heard horror stories of homeless people being taken advantage of for everything from insurance scams to like in this case a construction company forcibly removing them in order to start construction. Or much worse people preying on them simply to hurt them. Because the role Mitsuhiro plays in this story he gets to experience both sides of these issues. It's truly an exceptional piece of writing in itself to make the MC both the human who is this close to the edge and the one preying upon those who have already fallen from the ledge. But more importantly to take the responsibility off of his shoulders. Because quite honestly I desperately did not want to see this man lose everything either due to his possession/mental health issues or what amounts to criminal activity, Mitsuhiro was truly a good person and you will understand this sentence after reading this. After the horror of everything he does I was more terrified that he would be torn away from his family who clearly loved him and was worried for him than anything else.

Now, I know I've done this review a little bit backwards, but to be fair if you have read or watched anything in regards to evil spirits in any culture accidentally getting let out by a bumbling MC than I mean that portion of the story is pretty common. Especially if you watch Kdramas, Cdramas, or anime. That's not what made this good, it was truly Ubukata's ability to weave these social and yes poltical issues throughout the narrative in a manner that was quite frankly refreshingly blunt while not be condescending about it. He's just really stating facts regarding the issues that the unhoused and the elderly face and while his version of this comes from Japan it's a common tale throughout the world. He just happened to find an extremely terrifying manner in which to do it. Because yeah make no mistake this was scary (if you thought I wasn't going to find a way to fit it in think again, all of my horror reviews forever will have the word scary at least once). Not just because there's this thing that's followed him and is attacking his family but because the idea that this could happen to us for a multitude of reasons but because of mental health reasons thanks to societies views of mental health is something that we are scared of. Whether or not we choose to admit them out loud. My family has a whole host of mental health issues that yeah honestly without regular conversations with my dr I'm terrified might one day pop up. My grandfather shot himself, my paternal great grandmother's death was ruled as an accidental overdose of medication, but there are people on that side of the family that firmly believe it was on purpose. But here's the thing; it doesn't feel like Ubukata is weaponizing mental illness, it feels like he's drawing attention to it. It was written with care not with some fucked up sense to turn the fears we won't admit to even to ourselves against us.

Look, honestly, I could go on about this book for the next ten days and still keep finding new dimensions that I missed the first time around, so I'm going to end it here. But honestly, I know I say it a lot but if you are into horror, especially Japanese psychological horror, you need to read this. It was just remarkably well done and one of those books I am going to be dwelling on for months to come.