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刀城言耶 #1
염매처럼 신들리는 것
'블랙 앤 화이트 시리즈' 44권. <잘린 머리처럼 불길한 것>으로 이어지는 미쓰다 신조의 본격호러미스터리. 밀실살인으로 대표되는 본격추리의 틀에 토속적이고 민속학적인 괴담을 접목시킨 독특한 작풍. 작품마다 전혀 새로운 소설이라는 극찬을 받아온 미쓰다 신조. 그의 대표작 '도조 겐야' 시리즈의 서막을 연 작품이다.
인습과 민간신앙으로 점철된 어느 편벽한 산골마을에서 일어난 연쇄 괴사사건을 담고 있는 이 소설에서 미쓰다 신조는 미스터리 평론가조차 "한 작품에 담기에는 아이디어가 아깝다"(센가이 아키유키)라고 토로할 만큼, 방대한 민속학적 지식과 소설적 상상력을 거침없이 펼쳐보인다.
'빛나는 존재감'의 방랑 환상소설가 도조 겐야의 이야기는 한국 독자들의 열렬한 사랑을 받은 <잘린 머리처럼 불길한 것>과 <산마처럼 비웃는 것>, 그리고 <미즈치처럼 가라앉는 것> 등으로 이어지며, 본격미스터리대상, 본격미스터리 베스트10 1위 등 각종 미스터리 차트를 석권하여 작가에게 '본격호러미스터리의 기수'라는 영예로운 별칭을 선사했다.
인습과 민간신앙으로 점철된 어느 편벽한 산골마을에서 일어난 연쇄 괴사사건을 담고 있는 이 소설에서 미쓰다 신조는 미스터리 평론가조차 "한 작품에 담기에는 아이디어가 아깝다"(센가이 아키유키)라고 토로할 만큼, 방대한 민속학적 지식과 소설적 상상력을 거침없이 펼쳐보인다.
'빛나는 존재감'의 방랑 환상소설가 도조 겐야의 이야기는 한국 독자들의 열렬한 사랑을 받은 <잘린 머리처럼 불길한 것>과 <산마처럼 비웃는 것>, 그리고 <미즈치처럼 가라앉는 것> 등으로 이어지며, 본격미스터리대상, 본격미스터리 베스트10 1위 등 각종 미스터리 차트를 석권하여 작가에게 '본격호러미스터리의 기수'라는 영예로운 별칭을 선사했다.
- GenresMystery
557 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
1 person is currently reading
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 20, 2017
Too long, get bored easily.
July 13, 2025
It took me TWO. WHOLE. MONTHS. to finish this book due to university and life getting in my way, and that really wasn't optimal. Man.
厭魅の如き憑くもの ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits") is a curious mixture of folk horror and mystery, aiming to deliver ample doses of both genres to the reader. The most outstanding part of the novel is probably the setting of Kagagushi village and the folkloric concepts which make it tick. It's seemingly really well-researched - Mitsuda Shinzo has obviously put in some real work to make the tsukimonosuji aspect of the story come off as convincing and nuanced and I do think the result is quite respectable. There's some fun stuff when it comes to the etymology of the strange toponyms and family names, too. I also enjoyed the fact that there's a lot of more minor episodes describing the various strange incidents which have taken place in the village over the years.
Does Majimono succeed, however, at mixing horror and mystery? Does it deliver a story that manages to hit the right notes for both genres? I'm not fully convinced. For one, the mystery takes about half of the book (~300 pages) to even get introduced - everything before that is dedicated to setup and worldbuilding. The reader finds out about Kagagushi village's customs, its beliefs, its social structure, and is told a lot about the recent history of its main ruling families - the cursed Kagachi family and the auspicious Kamigushi family. There's lengthy explanations of the relationships some of the characters have, describing their marriages, divorces, remarriages, etc, as well as detailed flashback scenes depicting the childhoods of the younger cast members. Of course, there's also an ample amount of scary, horror-esque episodes describing the various strange events which certain characters have experienced either recently, or farther in the past. I found this section overwhelming, especially because there was no central plotline (such as a murder mystery) to follow at that point - it was all a series of vignettes, scattered pieces of a puzzle.
I wouldn't usually take issue with this approach, but I sadly found Mitsuda's writing style here dry and boring to read. The eerie scenes, for instance, over-rely on directly stating that a certain phenomenon is abnormal, scary, horrific, etc using various adjectives and epithets over and over again, which takes away from the impact of the scene once you begin to notice it. One could argue that's just how the POV characters perceive the world around them, but it's still just... not interesting to read, grating at times, even.
And here comes in my second problem - the characters. The book has three central POV characters and all of them are about as interesting as chunks of drywall. They have their motivations, they have some sort of personality, they even have their quirks, but the book never manages (or even attempts to) sell the reader on them and get them properly invested. This sadly includes the main detective, one Genya Tojo, who is probably the least charismatic and fun lead detective I've met in a Japanese mystery novel yet. This might sound like nitpicking, but to me the detective figure in mystery fiction is one of the most important aspects of the work - the more of a little freak they are, the more I enjoy their presence. Tojo just didn't work for me as a character here - he navigates the case clumsily enough to be seen as a failman, but he doesn't manage to actually be as fun as a real deal failman (what).
The mystery in itself had me bored for the longest time, too. It takes too long to start (until then, the reader has no idea what the mystery aspect of the book is even going to be about, making theorizing about the contents of the book really difficult) and once it does, it feels surprisingly plain for most of its duration. There's some intrigue to it, but I mostly found the individual murders boring, and I couldn't really care less about any of the victims, either. A large chunk of Majimono feels meandering and aimless as a result - it works once you actually get to the solution and understand what the author was going for, but I didn't find it to be a thrilling reading experience by any means. I wasn't invested emotionally or intellectually at all for most of the book, and would instead mostly look forward to the next folklore exposition dump - now those were consistently fun.
All of that being said, the actual solution to the mystery IS fun and does show that a lot of thought went into writing the book. While I do believe the text could be trimmed by at least 100 pages, the narrative backbone of the mystery is surprisingly solid and it does manage to convince the reader that All Of This had an actual point to it. There's even a few really neat little touches which honestly improved my opinion of certain plot elements and structural oddities.
All in all, I'm a bit unsure how exactly to rate this book. I was dreadfully bored by a lot of it despite loving both horror and mystery as genres and finishing it felt more like a release than anything else. At the same time, though, the solution was fun and I now have the gift of hindsight, making me capable of reappraising certain segments of it as more meaningful than I originally thought. Despite all of Majimono's faults, I'll probably keep reading the series - I see promise here and I want to believe that Mitsuda's later works WILL iron out some of the issues I had with this one.
厭魅の如き憑くもの ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits") is a curious mixture of folk horror and mystery, aiming to deliver ample doses of both genres to the reader. The most outstanding part of the novel is probably the setting of Kagagushi village and the folkloric concepts which make it tick. It's seemingly really well-researched - Mitsuda Shinzo has obviously put in some real work to make the tsukimonosuji aspect of the story come off as convincing and nuanced and I do think the result is quite respectable. There's some fun stuff when it comes to the etymology of the strange toponyms and family names, too. I also enjoyed the fact that there's a lot of more minor episodes describing the various strange incidents which have taken place in the village over the years.
Does Majimono succeed, however, at mixing horror and mystery? Does it deliver a story that manages to hit the right notes for both genres? I'm not fully convinced. For one, the mystery takes about half of the book (~300 pages) to even get introduced - everything before that is dedicated to setup and worldbuilding. The reader finds out about Kagagushi village's customs, its beliefs, its social structure, and is told a lot about the recent history of its main ruling families - the cursed Kagachi family and the auspicious Kamigushi family. There's lengthy explanations of the relationships some of the characters have, describing their marriages, divorces, remarriages, etc, as well as detailed flashback scenes depicting the childhoods of the younger cast members. Of course, there's also an ample amount of scary, horror-esque episodes describing the various strange events which certain characters have experienced either recently, or farther in the past. I found this section overwhelming, especially because there was no central plotline (such as a murder mystery) to follow at that point - it was all a series of vignettes, scattered pieces of a puzzle.
I wouldn't usually take issue with this approach, but I sadly found Mitsuda's writing style here dry and boring to read. The eerie scenes, for instance, over-rely on directly stating that a certain phenomenon is abnormal, scary, horrific, etc using various adjectives and epithets over and over again, which takes away from the impact of the scene once you begin to notice it. One could argue that's just how the POV characters perceive the world around them, but it's still just... not interesting to read, grating at times, even.
And here comes in my second problem - the characters. The book has three central POV characters and all of them are about as interesting as chunks of drywall. They have their motivations, they have some sort of personality, they even have their quirks, but the book never manages (or even attempts to) sell the reader on them and get them properly invested. This sadly includes the main detective, one Genya Tojo, who is probably the least charismatic and fun lead detective I've met in a Japanese mystery novel yet. This might sound like nitpicking, but to me the detective figure in mystery fiction is one of the most important aspects of the work - the more of a little freak they are, the more I enjoy their presence. Tojo just didn't work for me as a character here - he navigates the case clumsily enough to be seen as a failman, but he doesn't manage to actually be as fun as a real deal failman (what).
The mystery in itself had me bored for the longest time, too. It takes too long to start (until then, the reader has no idea what the mystery aspect of the book is even going to be about, making theorizing about the contents of the book really difficult) and once it does, it feels surprisingly plain for most of its duration. There's some intrigue to it, but I mostly found the individual murders boring, and I couldn't really care less about any of the victims, either. A large chunk of Majimono feels meandering and aimless as a result - it works once you actually get to the solution and understand what the author was going for, but I didn't find it to be a thrilling reading experience by any means. I wasn't invested emotionally or intellectually at all for most of the book, and would instead mostly look forward to the next folklore exposition dump - now those were consistently fun.
All of that being said, the actual solution to the mystery IS fun and does show that a lot of thought went into writing the book. While I do believe the text could be trimmed by at least 100 pages, the narrative backbone of the mystery is surprisingly solid and it does manage to convince the reader that All Of This had an actual point to it. There's even a few really neat little touches which honestly improved my opinion of certain plot elements and structural oddities.
All in all, I'm a bit unsure how exactly to rate this book. I was dreadfully bored by a lot of it despite loving both horror and mystery as genres and finishing it felt more like a release than anything else. At the same time, though, the solution was fun and I now have the gift of hindsight, making me capable of reappraising certain segments of it as more meaningful than I originally thought. Despite all of Majimono's faults, I'll probably keep reading the series - I see promise here and I want to believe that Mitsuda's later works WILL iron out some of the issues I had with this one.
November 7, 2022
【2022Book19】"厭魅の如き憑くもの" (Chinese edition) by 三津田信三(Mitsuda Shinzou). I guess the title can be translated as "Like Being Possessed by a Demon". It is a detective novel mixed with Japanese horror folk tales. About the detective part, to be honest, I don't know if it is good or not. However, the whole plot and horror atmosphere are quite well-designed, so I think it is a good book for leisure and relaxation.
【2022Book19】《如厌魅附体之物》。一本混合了日本恐怖民俗故事的本格推理小说。本格推理我看得很少，这一本写得怎么样我不太清楚。不过整个故事设计和恐怖气氛渲染得还不错，拿来休闲放松还挺好的。
【2022Book19】《如厌魅附体之物》。一本混合了日本恐怖民俗故事的本格推理小说。本格推理我看得很少，这一本写得怎么样我不太清楚。不过整个故事设计和恐怖气氛渲染得还不错，拿来休闲放松还挺好的。
November 29, 2025
Mmmmm. Would have given a 2 stars but I'll give it credit for effectively creating a creepy ambiance throughout. Half of the book was literally labouring through complicated family genealogy and feuds, and repeated "I'm so scared, this is so scary, this is the creepiest thing that ever happened to me." I reckon I got more terrified by my own imagination than the actual events. I also dislike the lazy way of describing - "I faced evil but I knew I couldn't look at it face on so my mind blocked it out." Wow, convenient.
August 8, 2025
有点啰嗦，太绕文字游戏了，不过最后确实也圆回来了，只是我最近没有什么耐心读这种类型的叙事诡计
October 26, 2025
民俗恐怖氛围🉑️铺垫这么多结局就这❓
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews