Japan’s bestselling books often converge around practical life advice: Mental math tricks for kids, tips on how to sound smart and personal finance hacks have all been top sellers in recent years. Wider pop culture trends break through, too: In 2020, Japan’s top five bestselling books were all related to either the gory smash-hit manga “Demon Slayer” or cozy escapist video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
A new mania now has the country’s readers rapt: A set of odd books, somewhere between mystery and horror, between manga and novels, by the even odder writer known as “Uketsu.”
Strange Pictures, by Uketsu. Translated by Jim Rion. 240 pages, HarperVia, Fiction.
Last year, the author’s “Strange Houses 2,” a “floor-plan mystery” sequel to his popular diagram-heavy novel, was the top-selling book across all genres in Japan. Of the 10 bestselling books, he held three spots, and the previous year, he wrote two of the top five, beating out Haruki Murakami’s long-awaited novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls.” In January, Uketsu reached English readers for the first time with “Strange Pictures,” released in the U.S. and the U.K., two of the 30 countries where the novel is slated for publication.
So who, exactly, is this guy?
It turns out, we’re not really meant to know. Because hovering in the background of the smash-hit publishing phenomenon like a polite ghost is another mystery: Uketsu is not a person but a persona, the pen name for a writer and YouTuber who’s entirely anonymous.
Uketsu’s biography is brief: The author is from Kanagawa Prefecture, majored in economics in college and is a big fan of rabbits. He is a “he,” despite operating for many years in Japan without specifying his gender, as Japanese often drops the personal pronoun.
On his YouTube channel, where he has 1.73 million subscribers, and in rare public appearances, Uketsu always appears in costume with the theatrics dialed way up: He wears a black stocking over his hair, a black turtleneck and black gloves, inspired by the outfits of kuroko (kabuki stagehands), with a crude paper-mache mask, and uses a voice changer that pitches his naturally deep voice to a comically high falsetto.
“Uketsu” is an uncommon reading of the Japanese 雨穴, the characters for “rain” and “hole,” though the latter can also be interpreted as "ass." The author says he chose the pairing for its senselessness. "(The name) doesn't have any particular meaning ... (but) both characters leave a kind of wet, gloomy impression, so I thought it fit my interests and personality,” he says.
In reality, the author seems far more sober, almost staid. (He also admits, “I’m a scaredy cat.”) On the phone with The Japan Times, he declines to give his exact age but says he grew up surfing the internet as a child, which places him in the late to middle millennial age range. He declines to answer questions about whether he has a partner or family — “I’ll leave it to your imagination” — and by way of background, says he’s definitely “not rich.”
After graduation, Uketsu wanted to work in manga or music, but when neither worked out, he thought he could still put his entertainment-related knowledge to use. He started writing articles for gag website Omokoro in 2018. He aimed to “make readers laugh and smile and feel happy,” which he did successfully with useful articles like DIY tips on turning your toilet into a mastermind’s lair and a photo essay on drying huge sheets of meat on the balcony.
“Omokoro is a media site that does anything and everything, so long as it’s entertaining. Ultimately, the goal is to get popular and amuse a lot of people,” says Uketsu. “What I’m able to do is just try anything, and I think that mentality of ‘let’s try anything’ has become a big part of who I am.”
Uketsu realized he would always be limited as a web writer who only uses text, so in 2018 he started a YouTube channel where he posted corresponding videos to go with his articles. His earliest works include a drawing of a bunny set to soothing guitar music and stop-motion trains with kabuki faces moving in suspenseful drama over a marsh.
In October 2020, as Japan was stuck at home, Uketsu published a “real-estate mystery” called “Strange Houses,” in which he and “K-san,” a designer friend, analyze the odd floor plans for a house and together cook up a murderous backstory for the family who lived there previously. In the corresponding video, published a few weeks later, he acts out the same phone calls and dialogue. Despite the fact that nothing gruesome or terribly exciting happens in the video, despite the absence of any figure jumping out of the darkness or appearing suddenly in the mirror, the video is truly hair-raising — and by now has been viewed 24 million times.
The viral mystery caught the attention of publisher Asukashinsha, and soon Uketsu had his first book deal. “Strange Houses” came out in July 2021 and has 2.24 million copies in circulation as of late last year. In March 2024, the book was released as a live-action feature film, and as of last year, all three of Uketsu’s novels have become national bestsellers.
Uketsu’s approach is unusual in the publishing world: Content creators can get book deals, and authors are sometimes good at social media, but few are equally known for both. His books center on mystery-box narratives with outlandish and abruptly left-turn revelations such that the stories can’t reasonably be solved, even by the shrewdest mystery reader. His style is decidedly not literary or high-brow; Uketsu aims for accessibility and wide appeal.
“The Uketsu vibe is to offer eeriness along with puzzling tricks, satisfying both a desire for gentle frights and the pleasure of seeing problems solved,” says Jim Rion, the English translator for “Strange Pictures” and “Strange Houses,” the latter of which will be released in June 2025.
There is also a restrained build-up to “Strange Pictures,” a novel in which one of the creepiest passages contains nothing but two college students discussing some drawings they found on a blog.
“Classic American horror (films) like ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ or ‘Friday the 13th’ are violent, bloody and grotesque, and the horror is very powerful,” says Uketsu. “Japanese domestic horror tends to be more quiet, a bit modest in appearance, and it’s the kind that slowly builds up that sense of fear in your mind.”
Uketsu believes that a key to his success is that his readers skew young, as young as children and teenagers, and he prides himself on hearing that for many readers, his novels are the first they’ve ever read.
“In Japan, people who read books tend to be a bit older, but I feel my own books resonate more with younger people — kind of tapping into their energy,” says Uketsu. “It’s the power of word-of-mouth, like when students start saying at school, ‘Hey, this book is really good.’”
And, Uketsu realizes, his mask is all a part of his reputation. At first, his anonymity didn’t seem like a big deal — Omokoro’s masthead and contributors are full of pen names, avatars and nicknames, after all. But in the publishing world, pen names are much less the norm, and perhaps the anonymity has fueled people to go digging into his past. (That said, pseudonyms in both publishing and entertainment more widely are more common in Japan than in the West, though most artists do show their real faces.)
Uketsu is conflicted on the matter. “When I was trying to write interesting articles and make a career out of it, I often thought about whether I should change my look or maybe take off my mask,” he says. “But it wasn’t until I started making horror videos that I realized my appearance could actually benefit the things I make.”
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