After the indomitably rational Kyogokudo spends a great deal of time expounding on such topics as quantum mechanics, religion, collective delusions and the truth (as he sees it) underlying the supernatural, he suggests that Sekiguchi go to see their friend, a private investigator. The pregnant woman's husband disappeared about a year and half earlier, never to be seen again after locking himself into a room in the annex of the clinic. The current Kuonjis run the Kuonji Clinic, once a prestigious institution, but one which has now fallen on hard times since the war, not only due to damage from air raids, but because of stories about babies disappearing from there shortly after their births. Her parents are members of the Kuonji family, whose descendants have been practicing medicine since Japan's feudal period. He has come to visit his friend Kyogokudo to ask him his opinion about a story he's recently heard about a woman who has been pregnant for twenty months and has shown absolutely no signs of giving birth.

The novel is narrated by Sekiguchi, a freelance tabloid reporter who used to study slime molds but gave up his unprofitable research to focus on his writing and to make some money. Buildings are still in ruins, the black market has recently been outlawed, and tabloid papers are all the rage. The war is over, the American Occupation has ended, people are trying to get back to 'normal' life but quite yet haven't figured out just what that entails. The book is a mystery story with strong supernatural overtones, one that starts out a bit slow but picks up and gets progressively more weird as it moves along toward its ending, which is the most bizarre solution to a mystery I've run across in all of my years of reading. Chuzenji is a former priest who moonlights on the weekends as an eclectic faith healer, curing possessions and performing exorcisms, obliging his clients by acting on their respective beliefs to help put their lives back in order. The Summer of the Ubume is Natsuhiko Kyogoku's first novel, the opening installment of an entire series featuring 'Kyogokudo' Chuzenji, the owner of a used bookstore of the same name. ' There is nothing that is strange in this world, Sekiguchi.'

Originally published as Ubume no natsu (姑獲鳥の夏), 1994

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