Those Who Sneer Like the Mountain Fiend / 山魔の如き嗤うもの

Another Genya Toujou book, another series of bizarre murders in a remote village that are entangled with the local folklore. Those Who Sneer Like the Mountain Fiend is mainly set in the village of Kumado, but the impetus begins in the nearby village of Hado. Nobuyoshi Gouki is the youngest son of the Gouki family, a prominent clan in Hado. While Nobuyoshi’s father and brothers are outdoorsy and outgoing, Nobuyoshi is subdued and introspective. Naturally, he does not have a particularly happy upbringing. He leaves Hado to go to college in Tokyo and doesn’t look back. The Gouki family has a coming-of-age rite where each family member must visit three shrines in the holy mountains neighboring the village, but Nobuyoshi uses his studies as an excuse to put off the rite.

Eventually, however, once Nobuyoshi has graduated and gotten a job as a teacher, his grandmother persuades him to undergo the rite. While Nobuyoshi was always the black sheep of the family, he sees this as a way to potentially earn acceptance. Even if Nobuyoshi isn’t as physically active or familiar with the mountains as his brothers, the rite is essentially a day hike through a single-path trail, so it’s not a huge undertaking. 

Obviously, it doesn’t go as planned. (But, miraculously, it doesn’t end in murder!)

Nobuyoshi encounters a variety of bizarre and unexplainable phenomena, which causes him to wander off the trail and get lost in the mountains. As the sun begins to set, he discovers he is in Kanayama—a cursed mountain home to a variety of monsters, including the titular Mountain Fiend. Spending the night in the wilderness of a cursed mountain is clearly a poor prospect, but Nobuyoshi discovers, of all things, a family living in a cabin. They explain that they are the family of the estranged son of the Kasumi clan in Kumado, who returned to the area a few months ago and have been living in the cabin since. The next morning, however, the family has disappeared—and the cabin is locked from the inside, and nobody witnessed anybody leave the mountain all morning. Nobuyoshi investigates but cannot find any clues to explain their disappearance, and then is driven off the mountain by the Mountain Fiend. 

Nobuyoshi’s harrowing experience and failure to complete his family’s rite essentially cause him to have a neurotic breakdown. As a coping mechanism he writes an account of his night on Kanayama, which serves as the first quarter of the book. The manuscript is then sent to Genya, whom he requests to investigate and find the truth of what happened. 

While Genya normally disclaims any status of a detective, he empathizes with Nobuyoshi’s strained relationship with his father, and has his interest piqued because he visited Kumado before (in the previous book, in fact). So Genya travels to Kumado to investigate the family’s disappearance from the cabin… and this is when the murders start occurring. There is a children’s song in Kumado about the six jizo statues in Kumado, and the victims are killed in accordance with the song lyrics, with the colored bib of the corresponding jizo being left at each crime scene. 

However, there are a bunch of unanswered questions. What happened to the family that disappeared? Are they alive or dead? Several of the bodies cannot be immediately identified—are they members of the Kasumi family in Kumado or from the cabin? Why are most but not all of the victims from the Kasumi clan? Why are the murders themed after the jizo song? Why did the culprit apparently take several actions that seem unrelated to the jizo song (such as messing with the corpse so that it can’t be easily identified)? The multitude of questions entrenched in the incident provide massive amounts of intrigue and fertile grounds for speculation. 

While all of the Genya Toujou books are good, I feel like Mitsuda has hit his stride in the format here. Pacing has massively improved since the first book. While the spooky occurrences are limited mostly to Nobuyoshi’s ordeal in the first quarter of the book, after that the murders occur regularly at a nice clip, providing a decent pacing. While there’s a locked room in the family disappearance, the questions of the murders are centered more about the motive behind the killings and theming than the physical mechanics. 

Mountain Fiend also maintains the series traditions established in the earlier books. As in the other books, there is a mystery lecture (on themed killings, naturally), although it’s the weakest so far, and an enumerated list of mysteries and questions near the end, which is fantastic for keeping everything straight and organizing your thinking. In my review of the previous book I said that the Headless didn't feel like it did anything, whereas here the Mountain Fiend is much more menacing, despite its signature move being "laughing."

To be honest, I’m starting to find these Genya Toujou reviews difficult to write. They all feature the similar plot elements and they’re all good! I don’t feel like there’s much use in describing what the books are like generally because I’ve already done that, and while I can give a plot overview, I can’t go too deep since these are mysteries and I can’t spoil them. Mitsuda continues to take a core idea and pump it to eleven, which is great, and consistently incorporate small details sprinkled throughout the narrative (which don’t always feel like they were reasonable to pick up on, but which show how carefully and intricately Mitsuda plotted the story). In this book in particular it feels like Mitsuda is blatant in hiding the truth right under your nose, and thematically tying the ghost stories to the actual mystery solution.

I think I’ve praised the Genya Toujou books across my reviews enough that it should be clear that they're great and should be read if you can, and Those Who Sneer Like the Mountain Fiend is no exception.