Japanese Literature discussion

Not a whole lot is available about Uketsu's biography.
This article from The Guardian is a good round up
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

This thread is for Uketsu and any discussion of them.

Uketsu's youtube video for "A Strange House" with English voice track and subs, from about 4 years ago. This was before the book version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBIL0...

Uketsu's video "Internet Writing Man" from about three years ago.
you can set the subtitles to auto translate to language of your choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpuuM...

Nice work Jack!
I know that he actively cultivates his image and tries to maintain enough mystery to keep people guessing. Personally, I'm not all that impressed with their take on writer as Personality-Performer. I suspect it's more smoke and mirrors meant to disguise bad writing.

I think I would be more bothered by the idea of a novel being based on a youtube series, but Japan has a long tradition of cross media pollination, and fan driven content and support. So who knows where this might lead, and it's not like he's without precedent. Maybe a strong community is just what he needs in order to make "better" content.
I'm temped to say "thanks, but no thanks" to the rest of his oeuvre, but I gave my daughter Strange House 2 for a present a while ago and she says it's "much" better.
I hope others got enjoyment out of it and I can't wait to hear some other thoughts!

I went through „Strange Pictures” with one question in mind : why, o why I don’t get this hype, am I too old, to disconnected, read too much good books ?
I felt sorry for the trees that were cut down to print this book, all the pages with explanations of how to look at the pictures.
What I read I can’t “unread”.

However, I got this short exchange of feelings with one person who enjoyed the book and he told me that this book helps to remember that for everything in this world we need to remember about a different perspectives, that we don’t see the same things when we don’t know all the details. So I choose to take this thought as a reading heritage of this book.

Those are brilliant, thank you Jack.

I enjoy Uketsu's work. Are they amazingly written masterpieces? No, and I don't think that matters. They're just a bit of fun and sometimes that's all a book needs to be.

Thank you, Jack.
I must say that I truly enjoyed "Strange pictures" (light and fun writting), but not so much "Strange houses I", where the story seemed too artificial at times.

FWIW, Strange Houses is actually Uketsu’s first novel—Strange Pictures is his second. (Even Jim Rion couldn’t explain the English-language pub order.) I don’t know if that might help explain why you found the former more artificial?

Thanks Allison! yes, that could be a good reason why.

I finished the newest translated Uketsu yesterday, Strange Buildings. (Very brief) review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The next one to be published is apparently titled Strange Maps.

It has been a while since I posted anything!
Though I've only read two stories so far, this book is just ok.
But, I found the author's name in Japanese to be so cool. I would translate it as "drain." What does anyone else say? There seem to be a lot of words in Japanese with eerie nuances, Uketsu one of them.

Marcia wrote: "It has been a while since I posted anything!
Though I've only read two stories so far, this book is just ok.
But, I found the author's name in Japanese to be so cool. I would translate it as "drain..."

His name uses two Kanji, 雨穴 one for Rain, and another for Hole. "drain" isn't a bad extrapolation at all.
One of the fun things about learning a foreign language is that you learn that your own native language has all kinds of little nuances that you never even think about. And I think you're right, words have a lot of power. It's probably a big reason why so many of us read.
As an author I find Uketsu to be a bit contrived personally, but their idea of writer as a persona, and a hidden one at that, is kind of fun. Youtuber to writer isn't a transition I've heard of before, but I expect we'll be seeing a lot more of in the future.

I just finished Strange Buildings today, and knowing that Strange Pictures was his first published book... it feels like these are getting worse as they go along.
While I liked some of the individual stories in Strange Buildings, and the dangling plot threads, I didn't feel like they were tied together in the end in any kind of satisfying way. Plus the shocking revelation in the final chapter (I won't spoil it in case anyone here hasn't read it yet) just felt like it was thrown in to startle and shock readers, not as some missing puzzle piece.
Strange Pictures was a good mystery and I cared about its characters and story. There were twists I enjoyed. But Strange Houses and Strange Buildings felt too much like they were carefully crafted products, instead of the work of an author, in my opinion. Unlike the ambiguous endings of other Japanese books I've read, this one's ending felt unfinished, not ambiguous. Overall, I'm feeling like Uketsu had one good idea that got turned into a decent novel, and now is pigeonholed into the same kind of story, only it's getting worse because of a need to make everything bigger and higher stakes with each new entry.