In Japanese folklore, a ghost that arise from the burial of a pregnant woman is an Ubume.
The Summer of Ubume is the first of Japan's hugely popular Kyogokudo series, which has 9 titles and 4 spinoffs thus far.
Akihiko "Kyogokudo" Chuzenji, the title's hero, is an exorcist with a twist: he doesn't believe in ghosts. To circumnavigate his clients' inability to come to grips with a problem being their own, he creates fake supernatural explanations--ghosts--that he the "exorcises" by way of staged rituals. His patients' belief that he has vanquished the ghost creating their problems cures them.
In this first adventure, Kyogokudo, must unravel the mystery of a woman who has been pregnant for 20 months and find her husband, who disappeared two months into the pregnancy. And unravel he does, in the book's final disturbing scene.
Whoa. Let me list the things that hooked me immediately. 20 months pregnancy? Check. An exorcist who doesn't believe in ghost? Check. What kind of exorcist has no belief of the existence of the very thing he meant to exorcise? A seemingly supernatural case with logical explanation? Check. A ghost that I hear for the first time? Check.
And this is what I felt after finishing it.
This book is completely scary. It covers both fields of fear - the irrational (ghosts) and the rational (all the psychological twists and dramas).
The book starts with lines that commonly found in mystery books - lines that spoken by someone we don't know. Sometimes we dismiss it, but later in the story those lines are found to be important. Such lines.
The story starts innocently enough. A poor journalist, Sekiguchi, visited his friend, Chuzenji 'Kyogokudo' Akihiko who was an owner of a used-books store in order to share a controversial story.
However, it was soon revealed that one of the person involved in the story was none other than their high school friend, Makio. After knowing that fact, Sekiguchi decided to further investigate the story. In doing it, he asked for help from his friend who was a private investigator, Enokizu and Kyogokudo's sister, Atsuko. By a strange twist of fate, Enokizu got a new client who was another key player in the weird story, Kuonji Kyoko, the sister-in-law of Makio.
And this is where the book begins to ride the crazy train.
The narrator - Sekiguchi - became more and more unstable along the story. I really want to shake him real hard or give him a good slap. CAN'T YOU BE A LITTLE BIT SANE, PLEASE. And grow some backbone. Buck up, man! At some point, I wonder which ones are crazy/ unusual. Is it Kyogokudo and Enokizu? Or is it Sekiguchi? I think it's the latter.
There was a long lecture about the nature of memory, brain, consciousness, subconscious, ubume, and quantum theory which I found to be a little bit tedious but interesting enough. Because I've watched Moryo no Hako before, those seemingly-out-of-topic lectures didn't bother me too much. I skimmed through some parts of them though - sorry, author. They were appropriate additions to the book.
The solution was a bit unbelievable. I can't imagine how a pair of eyes can thoroughly fooled their owner by unseeing something that was clearly there. I can understand if it just happened to one person. But three? And one of them didn't have any ties with the other two? Erm. I'm having a hard time to imagine, let alone believe, that such thing can happen.
This is a very noir book. It leaves a taste that needs to be cleaned fast, without delay. I don't recommend you to read another heavy or dark book after reading The Summer of the Ubume.
Nine stars. Deducting one for the solution.
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