As I write this review, I also looked back at the older reviews for this series and it's absolutely insane how this series manages to maintain this incredibly high level of quality throughout.
1) Majimono no Gotoki Tsuku Mono ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits", 2006)
2) Magatori no Gotoki Imu Mono ("Those Who Are A Taboo Like The Malicious Bird", 2006)
3) Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless", 2007)
4) Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend", 2008)
5) Himemuro no Gotoki Komoru Mono ("Those Who Stay Inside Like A Sealed Room", 2009)
6) Mizuchi no Gotoki Shizumu Mono ("Those Who Submerge Like The Water Spirit" 2009).
7) Ikidama no Gotoki Daburu Mono ("Those Who Turn Double Like The Eidola", 2011)
8) Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono ("Those Who Resent Like The Ghostly Courtesan", 2012)
9) Haedama no Gotoki Matsuru Mono ("Those Who Are Deified Like The Haedama", 2018)
When Ichiko did the ceremonies, she remembered she felt as if something had been following her all the time, calling out her name and trying to attract her attention, and when she was fourteen, she even ended up nearly dead. Genya does some minor research on the ceremony and the following day, he manages to convince Katsuko that the Amagami's long-running tradition indeed is connected to their historical social status in the village, setting Katsuko at ease about the upcoming marriage, but that same day, Ichiko and Fukuta receive a phone call telling them that Ichiko's half-brother Ichishitarou died yesterday, while performing the ceremony at age 14. What's more, it seems like he was murdered right in front of the waterfall, in a rather brutal manner with him being stabbed in the eye with a weapon coated in poison! Ichiko of course needs to travel back to Mushikuburi Village to attend her brother's funeral, but Fukuta and Katsuko are also asked to come along, as they have not met Ichiko's family yet, and they hope they can also properly discuss the marriage between the two too (and Ichiko thinks her very conservative and stubborn grandfather Genzou, the patriarch of the family, might be a little less stubborn due to the family tragedy). They invite Genya along too, as he has a personal interest in the Rite of the Ina but also local funeral rites. When they arrive in Mushikuburi Village however, the local police seem to know of Genya's reputation as an amateur detective too, and they hope he can also shine some light on the death of young Ichishitarou. He and his twin sister Itsuko are actually illegitimate childs of Ichiko's father Taiichi. Ichiko's two oldest brothers died in the war, her third brother was deemed too weak character-wise by his grandfather to become the next patriarch and Ichiko will marry into Fukuta's family, so Ichishitarou would have become the next patriarch, but it seems some people in the Amagami family were quite against Genzou's decision, but did one of them kill Ichishitarou during the ceremony? Sightings of a figure with a horn for an eye on the day of the murder also roam around, fueling rumors something otherwordly might have committed the murder, but could that really be true? Genya, reluctant as always, tries to figure out who killed Ishitarou so his friend can marry safely in Mitsuda Shinzou's Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono ("Those Who Are Sacrified like the Shunned", 2021).
This is the eight novel in Mitsuda Shinzou's Toujou Genya series (the eleventh entry in total) and ever since I started reading these books about five years ago, I've been an absolute fan of them. The way Mitsuda mixes horror with brilliant puzzle plot mysteries is amazing, and I especially love the focus on folklore. Basically each novel is set in some (fictional) obscure, isolated community in the mountains or near the sea, with their own local, centuries-old ceremonies and rites, tied to religious history. While the ceremonies themselves are fictional, a lot of the dynamics and interpretations presented throughout these books is based on genuine folklore studies, so a lot of what you read in these books is actually applicable to actual Japanese religious customs and rites. These books are incredibly informative, but also work very well as horror stories: while being detective stories, the books usually do include elements that are not really explained, suggesting there really is something supernatural out there, even if they have no direct connection to the murder plots. While I started late with reading this fantastic series, I have been buying the pocket releases on release ever since I have caught up, and Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono is at the moment the most recent release, so I'm finally really completely up-to-date!
While this book does take on the usual format of most of the Genya novels, it does feel a bit different, though not as extremely different as Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono ("Those Who Resent Like The Ghostly Courtesan", 2012). As usual, we start with a horror-esque opening, where we are told about the Rite of Ina from the perspective of Ichiko, as she relates how she experienced her own Rites when she was 7 and 14, and the really creepy things that occured to her while she went up to the waterfall and back. While a lot of the information here is relevant to the overall plot, you can also easily read these first few chapters just as a horror story, and it really sets the mood, as we learn about the Shunned, a fictional being that only exists to basically suffer instead of the "real" person and must never be acknowledged by name. Ichiko's detailed description of the route up to the waterfall as she retells her own experience is also very important here. The route starts at a gate, and then goes up the mountain, going past a small path with a big rock in the middle, a shack of someone who has been ostracized by his own family, through a small cut-out U-shaped path until you come near the waterfall. The route is not actually completely closed off, as one could make it through the thick bushes and threes to get on and off the path unseen, but this would take a lot of time, and your clothes would not go unscathed, and this becomes part of the mystery of Ichishitarou's death, as while he died on the route to the waterfall, it was not physically a genuine "locked room" (sealed space), but considering the alibis of the suspects and how much extra time it would have taken to get on and off the path unseen via the bushes, they do treat it as practically a locked room mystery, even if it's not really one.
While there are other mysteries that puzzle the police and Genya, like the sighting of a figure dressed in white, and a figure with a horn for an eye, around the time of the murder, the investigation is mostly focused on the death of Ichishitarou, and especially the alibis of various members of the Amagami family, who might have a motive for wanting to kill Ishitarou, from father Taiichi or the third brother Sanshirou (who might have resented not being picked as the next patriarch), to Sanshirou and Ichiko's mother and grandmother, who might resent having an illegitimate child taking over the clan. I have to admit, I wasn't that big a fan of this problem. Previous books had true impossible crimes occuring during the rituals in those books, like murders happening a closed off area where only the victim was, but here we have a relatively open area, that is kinda treated as a locked room due to the bushes/forest/cliffs surrounding the route, but isn't really. It takes away a bit of the mystery, as you can never really discount "random third party appeared at the watefall, killed kid, and left again." The investigation also focuses on motive, but these motives are fairly static: they point out what motives each of the Amagami family members could have or don't have at all, and while there is one new fact introduced later on, that changes the motives a bit, that one new fact is basically a wild guess, that is only confirmed because the author wants it to be like that, so that doesn't feel very satisfying. The middle part of the book is also a bit slow, as Genya only enters the area after the murder already has been committed and the whole village is helping out with organizing the funeral for Ichishitarou, so he has trouble getting information about the family and the rite as everyone is busy. Of course, we later learn a lot of these slower parts do hold vital hints for the mystery, but after the chilling first few chapters with Ichiko telling how her own rites went, the book slows down considerably, with a slow start-up time for Genya's investigation, which again is very alibi-focused, and sometimes is really about "it takes 20 minutes to walk from this part to this part, 10 minutes to the next part, here a witness saw this, then another five minute walk..."
The relatively simple set-up of the murder leads to another anomaly for this series, as Genya doesn't even need to make a list of 50~80 questions that bother him about the mystery, and which act as a guide towards solving the crime! Previous books had Genya making these gigantic lists of every little thing that bothered him, from facts related directly to the murder to things that bothered him about about the rituals in question and their history and it was by answering all of them, Genya would eventually arrive at a solution, but this time, Genya doesn't even gets time to do that, as he is rather suddenly asked by the police to just point out who did it. As always though, Genya uses his "multiple solutions" method, where he just loudly voices a possible solution, examines it, and then discards it if he finds a flaw an moves on to a next solution. Some of the false solutions are fairly simple, but I really love the major "wrong" solution of this book! It is absolutely bonkers, but is absolutely terrifying and fits so well with the theme of the book and the Rite of the Ina. I am glad it wasn't the real solution because it was a bit silly, but man, thematically it would have been great, and I think I would have learned to accept it anyway.
Up until this moment, I thought this was an okay mystery novel, though not quite up at the level of the usual very high standard of the series. While I can't expect all novels in the series to be like the absolute high points Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless") and Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The Mountain Fiend"), it did feel like this novel missed something. It felt like a story that would have been absolutely great as a short story or novella, but a bit too lean for a full novel. But the final solution did manage to win me over! While I still don't think the actual murder on Ichishitarou at the waterfall manages to be really memorable, though it does lead to some very interesting clues. I did find it a bit disappointing to learn the actual meaning behind the Rite of the Ina (Genya realizes the underlying meaning behind the ceremony, giving meaning to each and every single part/action of the ceremony) was not a vital clue in solving the how of the murder, I have to say that thematically, it is fantastic, as it ties very deeply with the why behind the crime. The motive behind the murder of young Ichishitarou is absolutely brilliant and the absolute high point of the book. It is a motive that could only work in this world, in this community as portrayed by Mitsuda. A lot of minor things that bothered me about the book suddenly made perfect sense in hindsight, as yes, things would end up like that if that's the motive! The motive is so deeply rooted in the old-fashioned, isolated, restricted culture of Mushikubiri Village portrayed in the book, and while yes, this is a fictional village, the underlying dynamics behind the motive are very real, and you could almost imagine this motive leading to murder in the real world too (which is what makes these book so horrifying at times, as they are based on real folklore). The clewing in regards to this is excellent too. The book is great at misdirection, at not drawing your attention to the motive despite it, in hindsight, being addressed so many times, and a lot of the minor things I thought were odd, turned out to be connected to this too, only I never made the connection between the various things that bothered me. The motive is something you will never see anywhere else but here, and that makes this book definitely one of my favorite reads of the year.
Ina no Gotoki Nieru Mono is a book that might not be as good as some of the other novels in the series, but that doesn't say much if the level of quality of the Toujou Genya series is consistently insanely high. Like Yuujo no Gotoki Uramu Mono, this book does things just a bit differently, though it stays relatively close to the usual format, but the ending does show Mitsuda is still a master at his craft, providing a haunting conclusion with one of the most memorable and fantastically founded motives I've ever seen in mystery fiction. I can't wait to read the next adventure of Genya, whenever it comes!
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