I picked up Tsukumogami Kashimasu hoping for a lively historical fiction enriched by Japanese folklore. Tsukumogami are household objects which have acquired a spirit after a 100 years of cherished use, and while they make an appearance in the book, of course, they are not central to the story; rather, they are mostly used as a convenient plot device to give the main characters knowledge they wouldn't have access to otherwise. The narrative is episodic, where each section introduces a new tsukumogami and mystery and also - more or less - resolves the mystery. Although the last three were focused on the same (human) character, they were not interwoven so much as loosely related. This mode of storytelling serves well the anime adaptation the series eventually received, but it was very far from what I was looking for. Overall, Tsukumogami Kashimasu was short and sweet but failed to leverage the historical and cultural context it inhabited.