I am increasingly fielding questions about the fourth Uketsu book, tentatively titled Strange Maps in English, so I figured I should put up some kind of fixed point of reference.
I do like to read strange books!
So, here it is:
As of today, 6 May 2026, the current state of Strange Maps is “in editing.”
The initial translation was completed in April. The first round of edits is underway. Next steps are: correction, copyedits, then proofreading. Then comes the US version edit. Each of these take at least a month, sometimes longer.
Then there are the publishers’ business schedules, which of course influence release dates.
So, there is no announced release date yet. I do not know any more than you do on that front.
I can guess that it will probably be next spring, given past releases, although this winter is a possibility.
For release dates, keep an eye on the Pushkin Vertigo site (although Amazon has been known to beat the official announcement…). The US release date will likely be around the same time, but for confirmation check the HarperVia site.
So, I am sorry to keep you waiting, but thank you for your patience. The strange journey will continue!
The Japan Association of Translators Book special interest group has invited me to speak online about my budding career as a literary translator and my work translating Uketsu.
I plan to lay out how I got started on this path, the luck behind the Uketsu translations, and perhaps find some advice for those looking to get into the game themselves.
The schedule is April 18th from 3:00-4:30, Japan time. It’ll be on Zoom.
My English translation of Uketsu’s third, and longest, novel is out now worldwide.
The UK cover for Strange Buildings
Strange Buildings expands and improves on the core concept of Strange Houses, creating a multilayered narrative around the designs of 11 different buildings, which all end up woven into a much greater, and darker, story.
It reads to me as a much more mature, more assured work and I think it’s Uketsu’s best.
There was a lot to deal with in this one, as the many different chapters, or “Files,” take on different approaches and tones, giving me room to play with a variety of voices.
For example, in the excerpt from the old book in File 3, “The Watermill in the Woods,” I aimed for an old fashioned, somewhat stilted style, while File 7, “Uncle’s House,” called for the voice of a clever, if unschooled, boy.
It was a satisfying challenge to work on.
There is one big issue that arose in the translation that I would like to discuss, but it’s a bit of a spoiler. If you haven’t read the book yet, go do that now and come back when you’re done.
So, be warned:
MINOR PLOTSPOILERAHEAD
In the File 9, “Footsteps to Murder,” Hiroki Matsue reveals that he believes his father, who happens to be a Christian, murdered his mother and set fire to their house.
Later, our “great detective” Kurihara reasons this accusation away. Now, in the original Japanese version, his entire argument is basically: Mr. Matsue was not only Christian, his crucifix pendant indicates that he is Catholic, and the Catholic religion strictly forbids murder.
In Japan, where readers are by and large only vaguely aware of what being a Christian actually entails, that might fly. But not in any Western country, that’s for sure. I mean, come on, watch The Godfather. The climax of the movie is proof enough that it’s a flimsy idea.
Anyway.
My editor at Pushkin and I brought this up to Uketsu and proposed a couple of changes. We recommended adjusting the Christian angle to include pacifism and activism, but most importantly, we wanted to add an actual logical argument that helped take Mr. Matsue off the suspect list.
Uketsu agreed, and the story was changed.
I am generally uncomfortable with the idea of changing actual story points, and would never do so without active input from the author, but seriously, that particular idea struck me as nearly fatal to the story. I could see quite a few readers in the West refusing to take the book seriously after an argument like that. But, again, most Japanese readers wouldn’t even bat an eye at it. Only about 1% of the population is Christian here, so most people here don’t even know a believer.
So, we had a very successful book in Japan that we were pretty sure needed more than just words changed to really succeed in English. It needed structural changes, too. I think it worked out pretty well, and the core of the story remainss exactly as Uketsu intended it.
The Ark is a mystery/thriller in the honkaku mode. It tells the story of a group of seven friends from university who meet up and hike to an old abandoned underground facility one of them found. They end up deciding to stay the night and a family of three also show up, rather mysteriously, then they all get trapped when an earthquake blocks the door.
Complications start piling up, and then bodies start piling up, and the whole thing becomes a tense, claustrophobic journey into pitch-black nihilism. This is a book where the ending hits like a punch in the gut.
Translators often talk about the linguistic challenges of the job, of trying to find the right way to convey the author’s message and so on.
It’s less common, I think, to talk about the emotional element.
The act of translation starts (and proceeds, and ends!) with reading. Reading deeply. Reading repeatedly. Eking out all the nuance and meaning I can from a work. I can’t speak for everyone, but when I translate a book I get emotionally invested in a way I rarely do otherwise. I have to, or the whole thing falls flat.
Which means that in translating a dark work like this, I am immersed in all that bleakness and cold-blooded murder for literal months.
It was hard to translate The Ark. Unpleasant. It weighed on me.
Which is not to say there is anything wrong with the book. It’s tight, clever, and written from a place of real care for the genre. It’s a good book. Very good.
But it’s not a happy one. I was glad when I was finished with this one.
And now it’s out there for readers to experience for themselves. There are some who will love the weight of the tension, like a mountain hanging above your head. Others will hate the breathless atmosphere of creeping doom, like water slowly rising up to steal your breath. But for fans of deduction-focused mysteries and darker tales, I think this one will satisfy indeed.
My growing disgust with the tech world’s grotesque insistence on shoving LLM/GenAI down our throats finally reached a fever pitch last year, and I began divesting myself of all as many ties to those companies as I could. The worst offender in my own professional workflow was, of course, Microsoft.
I cancelled my Office 365 subscription and, hardest of all, switched to the Ubuntu operating system in August or September of last year. I didn’t write it down, exactly, but.. Around six months ago. So, here we are, half a year later, and I wanted to do a review on how it’s going.
I started off with a “soft switch,” double booting my laptop with Windows. I had to make sure that I could still handle all my professional tasks, after all. But since I had been using LibreOffice for all my document work since spring, and LibreOffice comes bundled with Ubuntu from the start, I was pretty confident.
And now, roughly six months later, how’s it going?
Fine. Better than fine. Great. I have replaced everything I needed on Windows for work with either free or one-off purchase accounts. Not only have I broken away from broken LLM bullshit, but I’ve stopped paying licensing fees for software!
I use a lifetime subscription to PCloud for cloud storage, which has a native Linux app. I use the Free and Open Source (FOSS) Evolution email app for all the different accounts I’ve amassed. I use FOSS OmegaT for my translation tool, one I’ve used for years anyway, and again it has a Linux app.
In that time I have had zero problems doing my work, which includes creating and editing enormous documents with multiple rounds of edits using track changes and comments. Edits on Strange Buildings? All done in LibreOffice Writer on Ubuntu (And The Ark was all done in LibreOffice on Windows…). In fact, I get the feeling that Writer on Ubuntu handles those big jobs a bit more smoothly than Word did on Windows. No issues with compatibility, no terrible formatting issues, no muss, no fuss.
Other work tasks, like generating and editing PDFs or writing presentations have gone well, too. I did have one mishap making a presentation in PowerPoint then editing it in LibreOffice Impress, but I have worked out a backup and autosave system since then and have had no issues. I run my work tracker/to do sheets and invoices in LibreOffice Calc (Excel compatible).
Right now, there is only one single task that I have to sometimes perform (maybe once a year) to make my job easier—but is not essential—that requires software I can only find on Windows. So, I have used Windows exactly ONCE since last October.
Otherwise, I simply don’t need Microsoft, and I’m still investigating ways around even that one little use.
There is a certain intimidation factor to Linux, I will admit. Many app installations have required me to use the terminal instead of the clear GUI interface that Windows users feel most comfortable with. But all of that is copy/pasting commands, anyway. Not like I have to memorize code or long-winded user manuals or something. Honestly, the only real frustration I’ve had is that one work client has set up a special email address for me and their security settings are odd so lots of email clients won’t even connect to it. That’s not Linux’s fault, that’s the client. But even then, I found a way around it.
Ubuntu just works, for me. Absolutely every bit as well as, if not better than, Windows 11 ever did.
I’m not going to tell anyone they should do what I did. We all have our own comfort levels with technology and our own bullshit thresholds. But I can say that I see absolutely no reason to ever move back to any Microsoft product, and if you have even the slightest tolerance for non-GUI software tinkering, you might give Ubuntu a try. It’s probably simpler than you fear, and it’s as functional as most people probably need.
Jim Rion - Translator & Writer 