変な家 🏠 🔍 (IBC)・Week 10

[ekuroe]

変な家
Intermediate Book Club
Home Thread

Week 10	6 October 2024
End page	??
End %	100%
Pages	??
Starting location	1797
Location count	264
Last week	Week 9

Vocabulary

変な家 🏠🔍

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

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[simias]

おしまい

I chuckled when kurihara said something along the lines of “well I guess in the end all my plan theory didn’t really matter uh?” At least the author is self-aware I suppose.

And of course he immediately starts cooking again with the Kaiser Soze theory. I quite liked this ultimate twist, I had noticed some of those oddities earlier (in particular the question of how they maintained the katabuchi hit list) but didn’t think it was a hint.

Unfortunately it’s not really enough to salvage that third act for me. If at least that twist had something to do with one of the plans, like a final discovery that contradicts something yoshi said for instance, that would have been cooler. Also Yoshie masterminding all this seems completely implausible, how could she anticipate this sequence of events? What if somebody acted like a normal human being and called the cops instead?

Also who was the hacked up body missing a hand that was found near the Tokyo house? The one in Saitama was the council guy they used to fake the ritual, but the one in Tokyo is not accounted for as far as I can tell. Kurihara theorized that he had been cut in pieces to carry through the house’s hidden pathways, but if I understand correctly the ritual was never done in that house

[Buruberimiruku]

known unknowns and unknown unknowns

I had the same thoughts!

There were two bodies disposed in woods - Saitama and Tokyo. It was the Tokyo body, combined with the Tokyo floorplan that led to the writer publishing an article, right? But…we don’t know who that Tokyo body (missing a left hand) is, right? Shigeharu and his nephew’s bodies were found in the mountains, right? So maybe this is the body that continues the story to the next book?

Neither of the specially built houses in Saitama and Tokyo were used to murder for the left hand service. Even Miyae (whose body was found in Saitama) was already dead. So it seems the houses were never used in the way they were built.

As an aside, had Touya actually murdered people in either house, he would have known about the passageways (because he would have used them) and therefore, technically he wouldn’t have been imprisoned in his bedroom…so it’s not surprising he got out to help Hiroto.

Kurihara’s afterword introduced a list of other 怪事件 that the writer published/will publish and that Kurihara sometimes helped on. I guess these are setting up future books…? Or have they been web-published for real by Uketsu? I didn’t know about them (edited from “him”) before.

Most interestingly, Kurihara leaves two clues - one where he says not everything relevant is mentioned in a story, so things that happened were omitted because it interrupted the main theme/flow. Not sure why he says this, but it leaves one to think a deeper truth or a whole different interpretation of the facts could come out (later?).

More scandalously, he suggests that maybe we shouldn’t take everything (anything?) mom Yoshie said (or the letter from Keita) at face value. Like, did Keita really write the letter? Did he really kill the Shigeharu and Kiyotsugi? Or was he forced to commit these acts (rather than out of love). And wasn’t Yoshie remarried (or forced to be remarried) to Kiyotsugi?

Then Kurihara points to the triangle room configuration (with an inner window) to somehow suggest Keita was confined in there and monitored by Ayano? Or am I wrong about this? He also suggests that Ayano (and Keita?) had a hand in planning the house layout? So does that mean Kurihara is suggesting Yoshie and Ayano were conspiring together to get rid of Shigeharu and his nephew, using keita?

Does this also mean we should question whether Ayano and Yuzuki’s dad really did kill the cousin You-chan? So many questions makes me feel like I didn’t get any answers at all in the end. Most of the back story comes from Yoshie, so all of this could be discounted…?

I think the Writer and Kurihara can be sure that: (1) two houses were built with really strange floorplans, (2) there is one older pale child who seemed to be kept from public eye (and may be currently missing a left hand), (3) two members of the Katabuchi family were killed, and were in-laws of the murderer Keita, who was arrested and confessed, (4) two people seemingly unrelated to the Katabuchis were found dismembered and missing a left hand (one identified and one unknown), (5) Yuzuki, Ayano and Yoshie are all related and Katabuchis, (6) gramma Fumino has severe dementia and moved into a senior care home (meaning the Katabuchi mansion is now vacant?) (7) Aunt Misaki may be living in another prefecture working at a コンビニ (did she change her name to Furikawa Keiko?). Everything else is second hand info shared by Yuzuki and Yoshie.

Practical me sees this story as having so many “holes” because I heard/read this book was originally written as a series of webposts. This reminds me of the TV Series Lost, where the writers tried to introduce different story line threads to keep the viewer guessing what’s going on, but the writers didn’t actually know where it is going either. And ultimately many pieces of the story that originally featured as important, ultimately got discarded because it wasn’t helpful. So I’m thinking this could be happening with author Uketsu.

Also, I forget who pointed it out previously, but we never learn the name or gender of the writer. No gender specific words like 君 or 僕 etc were ever used, I think…

This is a very long comment, but one finally thing has been bothering me the whole book: it’s the terms 片淵本家 and 分家. I understand the essence of these terms but I couldn’t find a satisfactory term in English to describe it, other than the Main Katabuchi Family and the Branch Katabuchi Family. Is that how one would refer to these? I can’t think of any better word. It seems so literal a translation. And is the Japanese pronouncation Hon-ke and Bun-ke?

Anyway, I’m so pleased to have read a whole Japanese novel! This was such a milestone for me and so motivating. I really owe it to the book club members and especially ekuroeHungry Durtle for moderating the book.

I can’t participate in the next book, but I hope to join in again soon here, or at the advanced book club or the at natively mystery book club.

[Sasabonsam]

Whew, what a ride. Wrote some thoughts out after I finished it the other night, but probably need to re-read the end for clarification. Kurihara’s pov was different enough that it tripped me up a bit.

Thoughts

I have mixed feelings about where the main plot ended up. The tension up to the meeting with Yoshie, at least for me, wasn’t about how the murder house people were going to be caught or their identities, it was: How is any of this going to be proven?? The mystery being built out of pure guesswork was something that made the story interesting, and I was waiting for that “aha! It was real/fake!” moment. So it felt anti-climactic when Yoshie made her conveniently timed entrance and revealed that it was (generally) real through loads of exposition. It really messed with the pacing imo.

Tbh I was hoping for a confrontation with the house’s family to provide that proof moment but, in retrospect, that much on-page drama was probably a lot to ask from a book where the majority of the action is making guesses over diagrams

The way Kurihara’s afterword cast doubt on things was pretty cool, though. Particularly on the narrator/author. It’s easy to get so focused on the wildness of Kurihara’s theories or the Katabuchi story that you forget that the character transcribing those things isn’t necessarily reliable, either. A writer doing some creative editing to make a “real” story more compelling is possibly the most reasonable behavior any of the characters have shown throughout the book. It also adds on to other clues Kurihara gives at the very end to suggest we can’t believe every story that’s being fed to us. If only the narrator and Yuzuki could learn that…

Anyway excluding some of the Yoshie part, this book was really fun and easy to read. If I’m being real I’d recommend this to others just to have them consider the idea that an unusual floor plan could mean there are killer children hiding in the walls.

Thanks so much @ekuroe for hosting! This was a great pick

[2000kanji]

Who volunteers to read 変な家２and tell us whether

all or some of the questions in the above postings are answered there?

I for my part won’t risk reading another 400 pages just to find that there are more unresolved riddles.

[simias]

@Buruberimiruku

Kurihara’s afterword introduced a list of other 怪事件 that the writer published/will publish and that Kurihara sometimes helped on. I guess these are setting up future books…? Or have they been web-published for real by Uketsu? I didn’t know about him before.

Wait what? That doesn’t exist in my version. For me the book ends after the narrator and him discuss the yoshie conspiracy and he ends in his usual “it’s just a theory after all”.

@2000kanji

Who volunteers to read 変な家２

I intend to, but also I hope it’s a new story and not a direct sequel like in most detective stories.

[Domjcw]

This is the afterword

It includes a new Kurihara theory that, to be honest, I can’t work out what to make of…

(I’m not sure how to DM on this forum, but if you send me a message, I can send you the afterword)

[Domjcw]

@Buruberimiruku

Then Kurihara points to the triangle room configuration (with an inner window) to somehow suggest Keita was confined in there and monitored by Ayano?

Actually, I think that this is the
downstairs bedroom in the Tokyo house. I had to flip back to the plans in the start of the book. (Why didn’t the author put them back here?). That “guest room”, which later was thought to the be husband’s room, has an internal window into the living room.
But I have to say that Kurihara using this to jump to his rejecting all of 慶太’s story, seemed a very long stretch.

@simias

Also who was the hacked up body missing a hand that was found near the Tokyo house?

My assumption for the last couple of weeks was that this was going to be the
thuggish cousin 清次. (I was quite looking forward to discovering that he had been chopped up into little pieces). So I’m also confused by that.
I thought it was very weird that 慶太 completely jumps from telling the story at the point that 清次 is carrying away 桃弥くん. I had been wondering if 桃弥 perhaps was going to revert to his brainwashing and sink his teeth into 清次. Perhaps then the chopping up was to conceal the tiny teeth marks… But then that wouldn’t explain how the cousin’s body was found in the mountains…

[Buruberimiruku]

Re: Afterword

Here is my best effort at translating the list of 怪事件 that Kurihara mentions:

• The Katabuchi affair (it was written down in this book)
• Yahara family affair (the origin of an eerie video found in a second-hand home) of which an article was published
• Tsuruta Family doll affair (the mystery of a child’s voice recorded in a doll) of which an article is being published
• Mr Urakawa’s remittance Affair (unknown discrepancy in the remittance) of which an article is being published
• Mr/ Kureta AI affair – (science horrer mystery) [strange AI] also being published

[simias]

loose hands

@Domjcw

Actually, I think that this is the
downstairs bedroom in the Tokyo house.

Yeah I noticed that inside window (and no outside window) all the way back to week one or two and was surprised that it was never brought up. Clearly this was intended by the author from the start so why don’t I have the afterwords in my version? Very strange.

@Domjcw

My assumption for the last couple of weeks was that this was going to be the
thuggish cousin 清次.

Same, but that doesn’t explain the fact that the body was butchered this way or the missing hand.

Also throughout the story sometimes they take about missing wrists, sometimes missing hands. I can’t tell if it’s because the distinction is not significant in Japanese (the way in Russian they use arm for hand and leg for foot) or if it’s just inconsistent.

[Buruberimiruku]

more follow-up on the Afterword

I did some more digging and found Uketsu’s website. I read earlier he was a web-published author.

Under the section of 記事, one of the articles mentioned matches one that’s on the Afterword list (published Nov. 7, 2022: “人形に録音された、知らない子供の声の謎” (the mystery of the unknown child’s voice recorded in a doll). I see 栗原 is mentioned in this article. I’m kind of interested in poking around some more - I could see myself reading his other mystery cases.
雨穴の記事一覧｜note（ノート）

There is also a 変な家 movie that came out this March. I searched around on the internet to find a platform where I could watch it (outside of Japan), but I could only find a DVD available. I would love to watch this movie and see how the director interprets the characters. (Edit: in the movie, the Writer is named 雨宮 (Amemiya, I think))
https://moviewalker.jp/mv84274/

[simias]

There’s a manga adaptation as well.

[Buruberimiruku]

No spoilers here, but Uketsu’s main website announced on April 22, 2022 that they (edited from “he”) created an archives section (U-chives) where you can read a number of their stories online, including 変な家. I opened up the link and there doesn’t seem to be any paywall… Here is the link to the online version of 変な家. It is also missing the afterword, it seems, so maybe the afterword didn’t exist in the original webstory:

【不動産ミステリー】変な家 | オモコロ

Here is the link to the whole archive of Uketsu’s stories (edit: archive of free stories):

Uchives｜雨穴

[Boodil]

I wrote down my thoughts yesterday before the thread existed, because I don’t have time to check the thread much today or tomorrow, so no doubt there’s stuff in here other people have already mentioned. Sorry.

Last chapter and final verdict

The first three quarters of this book were hands down the most satisfying reading experience I’ve ever had in Japanese. Thanks to the detailled illustrations, it was often possible to guess the meaning of words without looking them up. It gave me the sense that I was actually reading rather than doing a learning exercise. It was also a great pick for a book club, since the weekly chapters gave us so much stuff to speculate about. The interview style structure worked quite well and gave me the feeling that I was dynamically discovering new information along with the characters.

The last part didn’t really work for me. The solutions consists of a bunch of scraps held together by duct tape that don’t withstand any kind of scrutiny. Also, some clues contradict each other, some of open ends remain unexplored and mysteries that the main characters puzzled over for whole chapters just turned out to be irrelevant and never got a final conclusion. We never found out who the second body was, why the Katabuchis cut it into pieces and kept the hand, and what they did in the other two years they were supposed to deliver bodies. Nor why they burned the Saitama house. We also never got any sort of final confirmation why they build the triangular room in the Saitama house and if they actually had a hidden cellar and if so, why they put the hidden cellar under the garden instead of under the house, among other things.

The villains’ motivations and the logistics of the whole operation remain shallow and unconvincing.

I also grew increasingly frustrated by how passive the MC is. Even though they are supposed to be a journalist, they almost never ask critical questions about the real elephants in the room and never research anything that isn’t dropped into their lap. They had the means to contact Ayano through her sister and ask her any open questions, but apparently they didn’t and as a result, 90% of the conclusion remains speculative and not actually worth publishing.

The epilogue made this problem worse, because if I understood it correctly, it makes it clear that the first parts are supposed to be a published non-fiction book and the last part a postcriptum added several years later to a later edition by Kurihara. So, at this point, the police investigation into Keita’s murders and the two one-handed bodies should be complete, and any editor worth their salt would have added the results and the fact that Kurihara didn’t leaves yet another glaring hole. And the topics he actually writes about are so pointless. The part where he claims that things have been left out for clarity and readability struck me as ironic, because the end result is the exact opposite.

So, final verdict:
Learning experience 10/10
Book quality 3/10

[Domjcw]

@Buruberimiruku

I forget who pointed it out previously, but we never learn the name or gender of the writer. No gender specific words like 君 or 僕 etc were ever used, I think…

One of the interesting things that we discover in Kurihara’s postscript is that the anonymous narrator has the same name as the author, 雨穴. So, presumably the conceit is that the author is pretending that this is a true story. With that in mind, I think that, from what I can tell 雨穴 is gender fluid or non-binary. One article talks about them as male, but using a voice changer in YouTube episodes to have a high pitched voice.

I don’t think we have discussed the author at all here in this book club, but they are a 覆面作家、which seems to be much more of a thing in Japan.

I also think that the author’s name is a neologism. As far as I can see, the name/reading is unique. Not sure what the connotations are of the name to a Japanese reader.

[Domjcw]

Totally mundane theory (#2)

OK, so there is an internal window into the small bedroom on the first floor of the Tokyo house.

Kurihara’s first theory was that this room was the ‘guest room’ for people invited to the murder house. His second theory was that the father was sleeping downstairs (when they weren’t murdering people), while the mother and baby were upstairs.
Then in Kurihara shark-jumping style, he decides that the window casts doubt on everything that 慶太 writes in his letter (I didn’t really follow the logic. Something about him getting sick of his childhood sweetheart? So then, why did he hand himself into the police??)

But we now know that the house was built according to plans from the 片淵家, but 綾乃 and 慶太 were a. very close and b. trying to pull the wool over the eyes of their watcher and the family.

So it strikes me that the room was potentially built with the original plan in mind, but wasn’t necessary used that way.
There was no reason for the couple to sleep separately.
But they could have used the downstairs room for the baby to have daytime naps. (maybe even to sleep in a separate room during the night, though I don’t think that is the Japanese way). Then they could use the window to check in on how 浩人 was sleeping, and wouldn’t have to have him sleeping upstairs near 桃弥くん (who they were still a bit suspicious of). Perhaps they had found the internal window useful in the Saitama house for the baby’s room, and so replicated it in the Tokyo house?

[Phryne]

I completely glossed over the afterword I tend to skip afterwords because reading Japanese is hard and the juice usually isn’t worth the squeeze… didn’t realise this one is actually relevant to the story!

[kmca]

@Buruberimiruku

Summary

So does that mean Kurihara is suggesting Yoshie and Ayano were conspiring together to get rid of Shigeharu and his nephew, using keita?

reply

That’s the way I took it. I think Ayano only married Keita because she saw him as someone weak who could be manipulated into murdering the grandfather & uncle, and/or taking the blame.

thoughts on the book

I’m surprised the book has got such a strong reaction from people. I thought it was rather good.

With Kurihara’s wild speculations this seemed more like a parody than a straight up mystery story. I totally wasn’t expecting all the craziness at the end with the incest and the inbreeding. Compared to that, building a murder house with secret passageways almost makes sense. To be honest the whole thing made me laugh.

[simias]

For me the issue is that it felt like the author started a different book in the last chapter. I think independently both parts have their merits and can be enjoyed for what they are, but the whiplash from the transition was really jarring I thought and I never really recovered. It’s weird to have us make all sorts of theories about the plans only to make it effectively entirely irrelevant for the conclusion.

Although my version doesn’t have the kurihara special which apparently calls back to the first plan which seems a little more satisfying as way to tie it all together.

[wiersm]

So, the last section and the あとがき turn everything around again. It might all have been plotted by Yoshie and even Ayano might have just been ensnaring Keita to take the fall. An already sinister story becomes even more sinister

I enjoyed this a lot. The book is pure pulp (in the sense of being over-the-top with a plot you should not think too deeply about) but pulp can be fun when you go in with the right expectations From Kurihara’s wild theories it became clear pretty quickly that we shouldn’t take it very seriously. I laughed a lot whenever the story took another unlikely turn.

I also think it was a good pick for the book club. It wasn’t too hard to read and we had a lot of fun discussions.

@simias

Although my version doesn’t have the kurihara special which apparently calls back to the first plan which seems a little more satisfying as way to tie it all together.

Hmm, I wouldn’t say it ties much together. It’s more another case of “Kurihara latches onto a detail of the floorplan and comes up with a new wild theory”, but that theory doesn’t really do a better job of filling any of the plot holes than the rest of the book.

@Domjcw

I didn’t really follow the logic. Something about him getting sick of his childhood sweetheart? So then, why did he hand himself into the police??

I think it was more that Kurihara didn’t believe that anyone could be so deeply in love that they would give up their whole life in the way that Keita did. But yeah, you are right that it is unclear why he would turn himself in in that case.