Spoilers!
I love a clever book, and cleverness is when I’m presented with what seems like something rather straightforward, but upon further reflection and an alternate perspective, is something else entirely. It’s basically the seed for Agatha Christie’s great books or going further back, Sherlock Holmes. Uketsu, the mysterious Japanese mystery-horror writer who wears a mask and uses a voice modifier for his videos, is a modern version of this tradition. His unique take on it is to use pictures to present the obvious and turn it on its head to surprise the reader. I reviewed his 2021 book, Strange Houses (Jim Rion’s English translation came out in 2025) and was delighted by it. Uketsu’s follow-up book, 2022’s Strange Pictures (with Rion’s 2024 translation), is premised in a similar manner. There is a mystery wrapped around murder and to uncover the enigma, one has to see pictures along the way differently than they first appear.
A man going by the anagram name of Raku, has a blog, which two college students part of an occult club turn on to out of intrigue. What’s mysterious about the blog is that it has a rather ominous final post in 2012, saying partly, “I’ve finally figured out the secret of those three drawings.” There’s reference to pain this person Raku “loves the most” must have suffered through and the sin they committed. As the student scrolls back through the blog, he learns it started in 2008, with Raku and his wife, Yuki, celebrating their one-year anniversary shortly thereafter. Then, he learns she’s pregnant. They’re a little bit worried since it’s a breach pregnancy. Along the way, Yuki draws pictures of their child, first as a baby, then as a young girl, a woman, a young boy (since they don’t know the sex), and finally, an old woman praying. Each picture is numbered, but sequentially, they don’t make much sense. Only when they layer the photos does the real picture of what Yuki intended to convey emerge: the old woman is pulling the baby out of the woman’s stomach. In other words, Yuki predicted that she would die in childbirth, and she did. The other two photos? It’s of Raku holding his daughter’s hand. What does it all mean? There’s much more to uncover …
Yuta’s father died of cancer when he was three. He’s six now. His mother, Naomi, takes care of him. Ahead of Mother’s Day, Yuta’s teacher has them draw a picture of their mothers. Yuta’s picture is rather odd, though: he drew the apartment building they live in with their room smudged and him and his mother standing next to the building. The teacher is surprised by the smudge and brings it to Naomi’s attention. They’re not quite sure what to make of it, as it’s beyond Yuta’s usual character. The next day, Yuta goes missing, which alarms Naomi since a mysterious man has been following her around. Meanwhile, the teacher figures out the mystery of the drawing, she thinks: layering again, or order at least, matters, which is to say, Yuta drew the outline of the building first, intended to draw something else, thought better of it, smudged over it with a white crayon, and then drew the apartment building. Yuta’s classmate confirms to the teacher it was a triangle. She inferred, with a bit of a leap, that Yuka, who had been scolded by his mother the night before the drawing, was indicating his mother abused him. Not quite. As it turns out, Yuta left the apartment himself to visit the graveyard of his actual mother … Yuki! Naomi is his grandmother. So now, Uketsu has connected these two threads. Creepily, Naomi has been using heavy makeup to make herself appear younger as if she’s actually Yuta’s mother.
Then, we go all the way back to Naomi’s childhood and learn her father also died when she was young. He died by suicide, which is the same manner in which Yuta’s father died. Naomi was left with her cold, distant, abusive mother. Her only companion was a finch she named Cheepy. One day, her mother tried to kill Cheepy. Defending Cheepy, Naomi killed her mother. A child psychologist studying the photo Naomi drew of a house with no doors, herself, and a tree with a bird safely secured inside, surmised that Naomi was a nurturer: she wanted to protect the bird and thus, could be rehabilitated.
Art teacher Miura in 1992 decided to hike Mt K. He liked to draw the view once at the top. When he hiked there, he was brutally murdered with a rock smashed into his face 200 times, his body nearly unrecognizable as human. Despite the brutal nature of his death, nobody seemed to have anything nice to say about him, including his wife … Naomi! Her son is Haruto Konno, which is an anagram for the blog at the top: Oh No, Not Raku! Ah! Three years after his murder in 1995, two journalists, or rather, a former journalist, Kumai, and would-be journalist, Iwata, are investigating the murder. They suspect it’s either Naomi, Miura’s best friend who hiked part-way up Mt K with him, or Yuki. Yes, Yuki! Yuki had a crush on Miura, which is wild given she would end up marrying and having his son, Haruto’s, baby. Miura’s murderer can’t let Iwata, who is retracing Miura’s steps literally up Mt K, figure it out. They murder him. Then they murder Miura’s best friend to frame him for the two murders. Later, as I said, Yuki becomes close with Naomi and Haruto.
It was Naomi. She is a serial killer, a brutal one at that, even if you can understand her first two killings, that of her mother and Miura. Miura was abusive to Haruto. Ever the protector of her “bird,” Naomi killed Miura (it’s clever how Uketsu unfurls the crime through pictures and the timeline of events). But then she killed Yuki (setting her up for death during childbirth, as a midwife) because she couldn’t stand the thought of someone being so close to Haruto. Three years after her death, Haruto figures it out, thanks to the drawings she left behind, and kills himself. “To the one I love the most” was about his mother. Naomi takes to raising Haruto and Yuki’s child, Yuta, and is as paranoid with him as she was with Haruto. Fortunately for justice, Kumai is still after Naomi in 2015; he’s the mysterious man following her and trying to rile her up. He wants her to attempt to kill him so police will have to look into the other killings. She does and they do. She’s arrested. For what it’s worth, the child psychologist regrets her rehabilitation assessment about Naomi.
Kumai survives, and thanks to one of those occultist club students, he’s encouraged to not only stay alive and get his cancer treatment, but to adopt Yuta since he’s been through so much (murdered mother, father who took his own life, and a grandmother who is a serial killer).
I loved Uketsu’s latest outing, although it wasn’t as heavily reliant upon the pictures as Strange Houses was. I did enjoy Strange Houses more because of that, but Strange Pictures kept me riveted, nonetheless.
Milam's Musings 