Fright House of a Lighthouse

"Jan 1 — 1796. This day — my first on the light-house — I make this entry in my Diary, as agreed on with De Grät. As regularly as I can keep the journal, I will — but there is no telling what may happen to a man all alone as I am — I may get sick, or worse ....."

"The Light-House"

I don't think I have ever seen a real lighthouse in my life...

Motoroi Hayata was once a student at the prestigious Kenkoku University in Manchukuo, but the hypocricy of the Japanese empire and the war left him completely disillusioned, and since then, he has been trying to find a new purpose in life, one that help him give the war and all its victims a place in his mind. After a horrid experience in the mines in Fukuoka, Motoroi decides to become a lighthouse keeper. As Japan consists of islands, all the lighthouses along the coast are of course of vital importance to the country functioning and are state-controlled, but lighthouse keepers often live a lonely life: many of the lighthouses are found at lonely cliffs and other places far away from the nearest towns and while a lighthouse is usually manned by about three men, who might or might not also have wives with them, they seldom have the luxury to just go out for the night in the city to relax. While Motoroi was lucky enough to have been stationed at a lighthouse for two years near a small town that attracts tourists, his next assignment is less fortunate: he's assigned to the Kougasaki Lighthouse in the Gansei region in northern Japan. The lighthouse stands at the edge of a rocky cliff overlooking the wild sea and is quite far away removed from the nearest town: while you can barely make it in a day via a boat, the route via land leads through a treacherous forest, and will take almost a whole day and that's assuming you don't get lost along the way! Motoroi initially arrives on his first working day at the town and arranges for a boat to bring him to the lighthouse, but the sea is too unstable, and he is forced to stay one night at the local inn, and is told to try the land route the following day. He's given a simple map the following day, but as he walks through the forest, he feels something is watching him and he occasionally catches glimpses of something... white. This reminds him of the stories of Shiromonko-sama, a local supernatural being believed to roam this region. As it becomes night, he stumbles upon a small house in the forest, and inside he founds a young girl and an elderly woman. Motoroi is offered a meal and a warm place to sleep for the night, but he can't help but feel piercing eyes at him even as he's staying in the house. The following day, he gets new instructions and eventually makes it to the lighthouse, which for some reason he finds empty initially, which reminds him of the ghost story told among lighthouse keepers, about a lighthouse where three men were stationed at, but for some reason all of them disappeared: a diary of one of them indicated they had been feeling uneasy in the days leading up to the disappearence and talks about the stormy weather.... but the metereological reports say there was no stormy weather in that area during that period. When Motoroi finds himself settled at the Kougazaki Lighthouse however, he asks about Shiromonko-sama, and he learns that the head lighthouse keeper himself had experienced some very odd things in the time leading up to him being stationed here, that may be related to Shiromonko-sama, but were his experiences really supernatural, or can Motoroi give a more rational explanation in Mitsuda Shinzou's Byakuma no Tou ("The Tower of the White Demon", 2019)?

Byakuma no Tou is the sequel to the excellent Kokumen no Kitsune ("The Black-Faced Kitsune"), which I reviewed earlier this year. The book introduced the reader to Motoroi Hayata, who is trying to help rebuild the country by doing the dirty jobs, but who finds himself getting involved in mysterious situations involving local beliefs and monsters. Kokumen no Kitsune was initially conceived as a potential plot of Mitsuda's Toujou Genya series, which mixes folklore/tales of yokai and other supernatural beings with extremely well-written mysteries, but the focus on realism (in this case, the depiction of the life of miners during World War II and afterwards) meant the subject matter was deemed more suitable for a story not set within that world. Byakuma no Tou continues this trend by also focusing on the realistic circumstances of a hard and demanding job in post-war Japan, in this case, the life of a lighthouse keeper, and that is absolutely where this book shines the most.

The depiction of the lonely and harsh life of a lighthouse keeper is excellent, and Mitsuda's done a lot of research to make sure you really understand how hard their life must have been, being stationed at a lighthouse for a few years and then being assigned to a new place again. There's little time off, and as a lot of the lighthouse end up being in the middle of nowhere, only being visited by people bringing rations and stock equipment once every few weeks, these lighthouse keepers have to be mentally very strong, having no choice but to solve any problems they come across themselves. The team at the lighthouse is also more or less stuck with each other, as depending on the location, the nearest town might be quite far away, so you're constantly in each other's company, even on your days off. I also liked how Mitsuda depicts the life among lighthouse keepers themselves. When they are re-stationed, they are picked up by ships constantly cruising along Japan, picking up lighthouse keepers and dropping them off at their new locations as they go, so the lighthouse keepers then get time to socialize with each other, and exchange information about the locations they were stationed at themselves, and about the locations they are going to. That is also how spooky rumors regarding certain locations spread among them, and given how faraway from civilization some places are, it's quite understandable how ghost stories regarding certain lighthouses would spread, or for example the story about the lighthouse were all keepers disappeared. The isolated enviroment where lighthouse keepers had to live their lives in a way serves as the perfect breeding ground for ghost stories, and there's surprisingly a lot of synergy here. It's almost weird how we don't have more lighthouse ghost stories.

By the way, and also a disclosure message: I translated two of Oosaka Keikichi's lighthouse mysteries (The Monster of the Lighthouse and The Guardian of the Lighthouse) for the Oosaka collection published by Locked Room International, and they are both name-dropped by Motoroi in this novel: he's been reading them and other works by Oosaka. It would be funny if I ever get to translate this book too, I'd get a monopoly on Japanese lighthouse mysteries!

However, I do think that as a mystery story, this is not nearly as interesting as the previous book, and this one leans far more on the ghost/horror story element. Which is not a bad thing per se, as Mitsuda's probably better known as a horror mystery writer, than just a mystery writer, but for the most part, this book focuses more on the unsettling ghost stories that haunt lighthouse keepers, and there's not even really a focal "mystery" throughout the tale, which makes this a difficult story to discuss within the context of this blog. We basically have two narratives: we first follow Motoroi as he makes his way to the lighthouse, and on the way, he has a few strange experiences that involve him feeling he's being watched, him learning about the local demon Shiromonko-sama, a gigantic, white presence that roams the forest and the cliffs near the sea, and the mysterious house in the forest where Motoroi spends the night: he later learns the house is known as the White House and that the grandmother is a kind of priestress serving Shiromonko-sama as well as a midwife, and is seen in the town as a 'necessary evil': she's only 'used' whenever people need Shiromonko-sama's help or want to appease it, but otherwise everyone tries to avoid her and her whole family line. The bulk of the book however follows the tale of the head lighthouse keeper, who happens to have experienced very similar things to Motoroi. We are told of how he had already heard about Shiromonko-sama before he was stationed here, because long ago, he had been stationed at the neighboring lighthouse and like Motoroi, he too had sighted glimpses of a white being following him in the forest, and even ended up staying at the "White House" after getting lost. We then are told the story of how he met his wife, and how eventually they had something precious taken from them by Shiromonko-sama, but that is the extent of the mystery in this book: various curious and creepy incidents that occur to different people at different times. Eventually, Motoroi has an idea he can provide a rational explanation to most of these odd occurences. Some of his inferences show very clever twists, but overall, it's fairly... tame? I guess. The overall explanation relies on a few hard-to-swallow coincidences, though they become a bit more acceptable if you just see this foremost as a ghost/horror story, with a "rational explanation" tacked on. In fact, I think a lot of readers will probably appreciate this book better as a horror story, because it's really good as such. Mitsuda's a seasoned horror storyteller, and you can clearly tell from this tale, as he very effectively juxtaposes the very realistic depiction of a lighthouse keeper's life to that of the supernatural threat that hovers in the background. But as a mystery story, it lacks a clear, driving hook, and at times feels more like a collection of random ideas/mysteries. This might be disappointing especially if you come from the Genya novels and expect something as intricately plotted as those stories.

Nonetheless, I did think Byakuma no Tou was a fun read, but it definitely leans far more towards horror, and is probably better read primarly as such. I do really enjoy the way Mitsuda depicts these harsh professions in post-war Japan in such detailed manner and how he uses them as a device to tell interesting horror stories, so I'll definitely read more of this series: at the moment, there's also a third adventure with Motoroi, so I'll get to that eventually.

Original Japanese title(s): 三津田信三『白魔の塔』