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.