Strange Buildings

• Read: 23 Mar 2026 - 25 Mar 2026

• Author: Uketsu (Translated by Jim Rion)

• Year: 2023

• Pages: 384

• Remarks: Strange Series Book 3

• Synopsis:

  • Following the success of his previous book, the Author began collecting stories from readers about bizarre floor plans and unsettling experiences in various buildings, and compiled eleven of these seemingly unrelated cases. Seeking to uncover the truth behind these architectural anomalies, he shared the files with his friend and architectural draughtsman Kurihara. As they delved deeper into the mysteries, they gradually realised that the eleven accounts were actually intertwined. Together, the duo pieced together the clues hidden within the layouts to reveal the single, chilling tale that connected them all.

[25 Mar 2026] ‘Strange Buildings’ (2023), by Uketsu.

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Reading Background:

• Glad to finish the book within two to three days, even though work had been somewhat busy when I was reading the book, and also I didn't have much time during the weeknights to read (G and I went to watch the 'Les Mis' concert last night!).

• Happy to have caught up with the Strange Series, and I could now move on to reading other books!

What I enjoyed about the book:

• The ease of reading it. 

  • Despite being slightly longer than its predecessors in terms of page count, this book was still relatively short, with diagrams and illustrations taking up many of the pages. 

  • All the chapters, apart from the final one, were mysterious, easy-to-read mini-stories. Immediately after finishing a chapter, I felt compelled to move on to the next to find out more, knowing these stories were going to be short anyway. Before I knew it, I had finished them all!

  • The mixed-media format (incorporating floor plans, interview transcripts, diary entries, etc.) provided visual representations of the plot, which made the story easily digestible.

• The weaving of 11 mini-stories into one whole.

  • Uketsu has become a master of narrating seemingly disparate short stories, sprinkling clues about how they were interconnected throughout the pages, and finally weaving them together into a complete whole through the final revelation. I felt Uketsu did this very well in this instalment.

  • I also found it was quite exciting to piece together clues from the mini-stories to solve the mystery of how they were linked.

What I found less enjoyable about the book:

• The drawback of the "puzzle" format.

  • In the prologue, Uketsu stated that the 11 mini-stories were all intertwined into one story, and actively invited readers to spot the connections.

  • While intriguing, this unfortunately immediately primed my mind for a singular objective: to solve the puzzle.

  • Subconsciously, I spent the entire book hunting for interconnections and solving the mystery behind how the mini-stories were linked, eager to reach the revelation at the end and check the "answer sheet" just to see if my theories were correct.

  • Because of this, I missed out on the joy of simply experiencing the journey. Instead of immersing myself in the narrative, taking the time to explore the settings or empathise with the characters, I was merely skimming the text to complete a set task or quest. As a result, my emotional investment remained largely flat throughout.

• The lack of novelty.

  • The first two books in the series felt novel - 'Strange Houses' for revolving a story around floor plans, and 'Strange Pictures' for weaving seemingly unrelated stories into an intricately connected whole. This book had these two elements, but little else. I thought Uketsu would be telling stories about "strange buildings" in some unexpected way, but I ended up groaning when I saw it was going to be floor plans again.

• The lack of a strong climax in the final revelation.

  • Nothing truly stood out for me in the revelation, which I felt was quite "meh". There weren't any "OMG" moments, just those which made me go "oh I see...".

My overall thoughts:

• Perhaps I was expecting too much from this book, hoping to again be wowed by Uketsu's creativity in storytelling, be emotionally invested in his characters, and be blown away by the revelation bits. In these aspects, I was disappointed. However, I was still impressed at how Uketsu had scaled up his efforts from the previous two books and told a complete story through 11 seemingly unrelated short stories featuring various timelines, settings and modes, all while using relatively few pages. Overall, I still felt that this was a highly decent book, and a must-read in the series!  

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• Premise

  • The Author visited their friend Kurihara, an architectural draughtsman, bearing eleven files filled with stories about bizarre floor plans and inexplicable events, which readers had submitted following the publication of the author's previous book.

• File 1: The Hallway to Nowhere

  • Yayoi Negishi investigated a dead-end hallway in her childhood home. 

  • It was discovered that after a fatal accident occurred involving a construction lorry outside the home's original front door, Yayoi's overprotective mother had the entrance moved, rendering the hallway useless. 

  • Later, the mother tried to have Yayoi's entire bedroom removed from the house, but she could not afford the renovation.

• File 2: Nurturing Darkness

  • Forensic cleaner Tatsuyuki Iimura presented the floor plan of a poorly designed home where a teenager had allegedly murdered his family. 

  • The cramped house was mass-produced by a company called Hikura Homes. 

  • The Author deduced that the severe lack of privacy and comfort drove the mother to murder the grandmother, which resulted in a fatal struggle when the teenage son intervened. 

• File 3: The Watermill in the Woods

  • An excerpt from an old 1940 book detailed Uki Mizunashi’s discovery of a strange watermill in the woods. 

  • Turning the waterwheel caused an interior wall to move, revealing a hidden room that contained the rotting corpse of an egret, which was later theorised to be a metaphor for a woman's corpse.

• File 4: The Mousetrap House

  • Shiori Hayasaka recounted a childhood sleepover at the mansion of her wealthy friend, Mitsuko Hikura, the daughter of the Hikura Homes president. 

  • During the visit, Mitsuko's grandmother died after falling down a dangerously designed staircase. 

  • Hayasaka suspected that Mitsuko had intentionally hidden the old woman's walking stick to trigger the fatal fall.

• File 5: The House Where It Happened

  • Kenji Hirauchi bought a pre-owned house in Nagano that a 'dark spots' app flagged as the site where a woman's corpse was discovered in 1938. 

  • Research revealed that Hirauchi's house had been built directly around the mysterious watermill from File 3, hiding the original structure within its walls.

• File 6: The Hall of Rebirth

  • An undercover report from 1994 exposed the Rebirth Congregation, a cult led by Masahiko Hikura. 

  • The cult worshipped a 'Holy Mother' missing her left arm and right leg, and members partook in a sacrament where they slept inside a massive building specifically designed to mimic the shape of her body.

• File 7: Uncle’s House

  • A published journal documented the tragic life of a severely abused boy named Naruki. 

  • He frequently visited an 'Uncle' who lived in a house containing a secret room at its 'heart' where a strange brown doll was kept. 

  • Naruki was eventually taken away by his mother's new partner and starved to death in a closet.

• File 8: The String Phone

  • Chie Kasahara recalled using a string phone to speak to her father on the night her neighbours, the Matsues, perished in a fire. 

  • Based on the length of the string, she deduced that her father had actually been inside the Matsue house during the call, leading her to suspect him of murder. 

  • Her father later abandoned the family, had a room removed from his new home, and committed suicide, with a photo of Naruki next to him.

• File 9: Footsteps to Murder

  • Hiroki Matsue, the son who survived the aforementioned fire, shared his own belief about the incident. 

  • He theorised that his devout, pacifist father had murdered his mother, placed her in a closet, and ignited the blaze to cover it up, dying in the flames himself because he was too slow to escape.

• File 10: No Escape

  • Former bar hostess Akemi Nishiharu recounted being imprisoned in an okito (a yakuza brothel) alongside a woman named Yaeko, who was missing her left arm.

  • Yaeko later lost her right leg whilst saving Akemi's son from traffic. 

  • A wealthy client, Masahiko Hikura, paid Yaeko's debts and took her and her daughter away.

• File 11: The Vanishing Room

  • Ren Iruma remembered briefly seeing a hidden room in his childhood home. 

  • He and the author uncovered a secret, magnetically sealed door leading to a tiny room. 

  • Inside, they found a wooden doll missing its left arm and right leg, which perfectly mirrored the Rebirth Congregation's Holy Mother and the architectural layout of the house itself.

• Kurihara's Deductions and the Final Truth

  • After reviewing the files, Kurihara deduced that the Rebirth Congregation targeted parents carrying the guilt of having 'children of sin' (children born from extramarital affairs). 

  • To cleanse these children, the cult convinced the parents to use Hikura Homes to remodel their houses into the shape of the Holy Mother's body. This explained the bizarre floor plans of the Negishi, Kasahara, and Iruma houses. 

  • Kurihara concluded that Yaeko was born to a maid inside the watermill, where her arm was amputated by the moving wall. Masahiko Hikura later married her and installed her as the cult's Holy Mother to revive his failing business. 

  • Furthermore, it was deduced that the Matsue fire was actually a cover-up by Mr Matsue after he discovered his wife had committed suicide due to a pregnancy resulting from an affair with Mr Kasahara.

  • The Author later discovered that the okito was actually a child prostitution ring.

  • The entire cult was an elaborate revenge plot orchestrated by Yaeko's daughter, who had been abused in the brothel and sought to humiliate her mother on a massive scale. 

  • Finally, Mitsuko Hikura confessed to the author that she had intentionally hidden her grandmother Yaeko's prosthetic leg under orders from her father, who was in turn forced to by his wife, which caused Mitsuko's grandmother Yaeko to fall fatally down the stairs.