Japan YouTuber novelist woos global audience with visual, accessible horror

By Canadian Press on January 15, 2025.

TOKYO (AP) — He wears a black bodysuit and a white mask, speaks in an electronically altered squeaky voice and makes creepiness his signature mode of art.

Uketsu, whose name literally translates to “rain hole,” both words that he loves, is Japan’s latest YouTube star and million-selling mystery writer.

And he is about to take on the global stage.

His knack for making everyone “feel uneasy” is the reason for his success, he told foereign journalists in Tokyo on Thursday.

His debut book “Strange Pictures” is coming out in 30 nations, including in English in the U.S. this week. It’s sold 1.5 million copies globally, according to the publisher.

Uketsu’s storytelling combines images and diagrams with text to draw readers into a horrific puzzle that they witness gradually getting solved, piece by piece. The pictures serve as whodunit clues to chillingly gruesome happenings.

That likely helped Uketsu resonate with the younger generation, more used to manga comics, video games and social networking than literature. Some children here dressed up as him for Halloween.

Uketsu, who credits the great Japanese mystery writer Ranpo Edogawa as his inspiration, said he merely wants to make his works accessible, even for people who don’t like to read.

He has leveraged his online presence to attract an audience. Uketsu has 1.7 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, drawing more than 190 million views.

His first YouTube hit, “The Strange House,” is about a home with a weird floor plan, including a prison-like room. It became a movie last year, making more than 5 billion yen ($32 million) at the Japanese box office.

“My stories are just really scary,” said Uketsu, sounding demure and serious despite his odd appearance.

He swears he looks quite regular behind his mask. If he were to take it off, no one would recognize him.

But he acknowledged that adding his image on his books helps sell copies, while stopping short of dismissing it as a gimmick.

Uketsu is working on his next book and has a song out, according to Takuji Watanabe, vice director at Futabasha Publishers, which puts out Uketsu’s works.

Watanabe won’t disclose how much money Uketsu has generated but swears that he is a “once-in-a-century star” of Japanese horror.

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Yuri Kageyama is on Threads https://www.threads.net/@yurikageyama

Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press