#sesuji

[virgilean]

About a Place in the Kinki Region by Sesuji

“Sacrifices demanding more sacrifices. How ironic.”

[kammartinez]

If the people around you start praising everything you do, then you start feeling special, chosen, even if you don’t deserve it. It’s the same thing. If everyone worships and fears something, then that thing becomes a god. And then to be gradually forgotten? Gods, Buddha, monsters, they all cease to exist if no one knows about them. So they assert their presence when they feel that people are forgetting. That’s just how it is.

-- from About a Place in the Kinki Region, by Sesuji, trans. Michael Blaskowsky

[secretchordstyx]

heartbreaking when the protagonist realizes he’s in a horror novel, but can’t do anything to extricate himself from the Horrors bc he’s getting paid to do a job, and the Japanese economy is not kind to the un-and-underemployed, so i guess we messin wit demons now folks 😭

[kamreadsandrecs]

Title: About a Place in the Kinki Region

Author/s: Sesuji, trans. Michael Blaskowsky

Genre/s: horror

Content/Trigger Warning/s: suicide; murder; death of a child; parental loss; cult activity

Synopsis (from publisher's website): My friend is missing. When he disappeared, he’d been working on a magazine about the paranormal—his first real job as an editor. With almost no budget, he’d resorted to digging through back issues and unused research material, looking for inspiration. As he did, a terrifying truth began to emerge about a certain place in the Kinki region. I have collected the relevant articles, interviews, and other materials in this book. And once you have understood everything, I would like to ask for your cooperation. I hope you will get in touch.

Buy Here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/about-a-place-in-the-kinki-region-sesuji/72740da2b9b42295

Spoiler-Free Review: So this was QUITE the ride! Not a lot of horror novels make me go “Nope! Not reading this after dark!” within the first few pages, but when a book does that, I KNOW it’s going to be fun, and this DEFINITELY was.

If one has ever experienced the feeling of going down a Wikipedia or just general internet rabbit hole trying to track down information on some specific thing one saw on a message board or on Reddit and staying up all night to do it, then reading this book will feel VERY familiar. The story being told in fragments of interconnected articles, message board posts, and interview transcripts, interspersed with some narrative from the “author”, entices the reader forward, creating narrative propulsion even with the lack of a “traditional” plot. The inclusion of “actual source material” like drawings, photographs, and screenshots from online livestreams was a very nifty touch, and helped up the creepiness of the story.

There’s also a clear absence of a protagonist in this story, which some readers have claimed detracts from the cohesion of the overall narrative. While it’s true that the book’s fragmented structure can be a bit hard to come to grips with without an obvious central figure around which to organize the story, in my opinion this just places the reader themself as the central figure. From the outset the book is framed as a request for help, and the book is presented as a collection of evidence the reader must put together to find answers. When viewed from that perspective, the reader is not just a distant observer, they are made into a direct participant in the story itself - a realization that is crucial to the novel’s ending.

Speaking of the ending, I found that it wasn’t entirely satisfactory. There was a certain lack of impact in the way this novel wrapped up, despite everything else about it being very well-executed. It made me think of the ending to Bob Ong’s Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan, which is in a somewhat-similar genre as About a Place in the Kinki Region (”found” material relating to a creepy event or events), but the ending of Ong’s book felt more impactful than the ending for this novel.

Overall, this was a really spooky read, especially for readers who enjoy found-footage horror films, and/or like to solve mysteries on their own. The blend of online and offline urban legends, as well as folk horror, make for a powerful and terrifying backbone around which the entire story is built, accompanied by a narrative that, though fragmented, encourages the reader to keep reading more and more by putting them in the driver’s seat of solving this mystery once and for all. Though the ending is not as strong as I wish it was, it fortunately doesn’t detract from the overall experience of reading this book.

Rating: four and a half persimmons

[tephrahedron]

2/3 of the way through about a place in the kinki region. genuinely got up and turned all the lights on after the sergeant's chapter, the vibes are as awful and scary as chapter 20 of the false daughter

[fdinotes]

Review#55

Tentang Suatu Tempat di Wilayah Kinki

Penulis: Sesuji

Goodreads rating: 3.89/5

Buku dengan genre horror pertama yang kubaca setelah sekian lamanya. Aku membacanya karena belakangan ini begitu ramai disebut dan direview di media sosial. Berhubung rasanya rindu juga membaca horror, maka kuputuskan membeli dan membacanya.

Bercerita tentang Sesuji, seorang penulis lepas yang mencari informasi tentang temannya yang menghilang tanpa jejak, Ozawa. Kehilangan Ozawa diduga berkaitan dengan pekerjaan terakhir yang sedang dilakukannya, yaitu meneliti kejadian janggal yang diduga terkait okultisme di wilayah Kinki untuk majalah horror di tempatnya bekerja.

Sepanjang cerita berjalan, pembaca disajikan hasil investigasi yang sudah dilakukan Ozawa. Bentuknya berbagai macam: interview narasumber, berita di koran, tulisan di blog internet, video penelusuran orang-orang di lokasi, dan sebagainya. Menurut, ini yang membuatnya menarik. Ini merupakan sesuatu yang menyegarkan untuk dibaca, berbagai bentuk jenis format bacaan ini membuatku merasa tidak bosan selama membacanya. Kurasa, ini buku pertama yang kubaca dengan format demikian, menarik sekali.

Tiap bab dalam buku ini disusun menceritakan satu cerita dari satu sumber tertentu, yang kesemuanya masih dalam satu garis besar cerita investigasi kejadian di wilayah Kinki. Ini juga yang membuatnya unik, dari satu bab ke bab lain rasanya seperti membaca kisah yang baru. Di sisi lain, menurutku ini juga membuatnya agak membosankan. Aku jadi merasa tidak memiliki koneksi kuat dengan cerita utamanya. Cerita yang berbeda tiap bab ini rasanya membuat ceritanya ‘putus’. Aku merasanya cukup saja membaca satu-dua bab, kemudian berhenti, kemudian ketika di waktu lain melanjutkannya merasa bahwa ini cerita lama sudah selesai dan ini sudah masuk ke dalam satu cerita baru lainnya lagi.

Dari sisi isi cerita, aku sungguh menikmati tipe investigasi semacam ini. Bukan unsur horror hantu saja yang ditonjolkan, melainkan unsur misterinya yang jauh lebih kuat. Ditambah, tema okultisme di suatu wilayah seperti ini jauh lebih menarik dan mengerikan dibanding horror yang menampilkan hantu saja. Kombinasi misteri-okultisme adalah tipe genre/cerita yang sangat aku nikmati.

Secara keseluruhan, aku sungguh menikmati perjalanan membaca buku ini. Walaupun, tiap bab disajikan cerita yang berbeda sering kali membuat ketegangannya naik-turun, tema misteri-okultisme dan penyajian format cerita yang beragam sungguh membuatnya menjadi bacaan yang sangat menarik.

Depok, 8 Maret 2026, 1.10 PM

[secretchordstyx]

finishing kinki region tonight ⚰️

[secretchordstyx]

‘about a place in the kinki region’ is actually so legit. halfway through, certain to have nightmares again tonight 😭