News&Articles

A Horror Novel I Highly Recommend for Japan’s Humid Summer

With the arrival of the Shoman (Lesser Fullness) season, it’s getting to the time of year when we start feeling the lingering humidity and heat of the approaching Japanese rainy season (Tsuyu) on our skin.

In a country like Japan, where the changes in the four seasons are so drastic, I believe it is part of the Japanese spirit to find creative ways to enjoy even the sticky, unpleasant air of the rainy season. In that sense, I would like to suggest one such way to enjoy the summer to all the expats and foreign residents here in Japan.

Speaking for myself (and I’m sure many will agree), I absolutely love reading horror novels in the summer. I feel that reading a horror novel gives you a completely different kind of fear compared to watching a horror movie.

Rather than being bombarded with visual jump-scares, you follow the text and mentally construct and reconstruct the entities in your head. You imagine the scenery, the monsters, and the background. It allows you to immerse yourself in a mysterious sensation where you become the director, facing your own customized fear. This, combined with the lingering summer heat, gives you a very literal chill... It feels amazing.

With that in mind, you might think I should introduce Stephen King, but here, I definitely want to introduce a Japanese horror author.

However, it pains me to say that my absolute favorite horror novel hasn't been translated into English yet. Curiously, the anime adaptation became popular overseas first, so many people know the story through the anime. But as a die-hard fan of the original book, I feel a frustrating dilemma, thinking, "The anime alone can't fully convey the true brilliance of this work!" There are translated versions in Asia, such as Chinese and Korean, and there is even a passionate fan community in the English-speaking world constantly pushing for a translation.

The novel is From the New World (Shinsekai Yori) by Yusuke Kishi, and it is the horror novel I truly want to recommend.

The story itself is set in Japan 1,000 years in the future, where civilization has collapsed and regressed to a seemingly primitive society. However, its foundation as a sci-fi novel is incredibly meticulously crafted.

In the early stages of the story, a group of boys and girls realize that the essence, foundation, and core of the world they believed in are actually vastly different and utterly terrifying. It starts off almost like a shonen manga or a children's fantasy adventure, but from that starting point, it reaches an unimaginable conclusion regarding the shocking truth of how their world was built.

Ultimately, the most terrifying part of this novel boils down to the classic realization: "Humans are the scariest of all." Within the structure of this story hides Yusuke Kishi's terrifying genius (or perhaps, in a good way, his twisted taste).

When comparing two species of great apes that are very close to us humans, the book asks: Which one is our "humanity" closer to? Is it violence? Or is it love? What makes us human? What is the defining reason we are called the primates at the top? It thrusts these questions at the reader with brutal cruelty. It’s a novel with such overwhelming power that it feels as if the author is breaking through the pages to challenge you directly.

This profound depth is something that, unfortunately, just doesn't quite come across fully in the anime.

I read this novel about 10 years ago, and it remains an absolute favorite that I still reread to this day. It really pains me to have passionately pitched this to you, only to admit that there is no official English version for you to read yet (laughs).