Name: Liminal psychology
Item: Touring the Land of the Dead
Author: anaca

Touring the Land of the Dead →

by Maki Kashimada, Haydn Trowell

Liminal psychology

anaca

Dec 08, 2025

Akutagawa prize 2012.

Another psychological book escaping the current jargon that dominates our side of the planet. This one is about inherited bad habits and wrong worldviews passed down through generations. It tells about how the MC gets rid of them during a two-day trip. (Translated into pop-psycho, it would be something like “a fine analysis of the perverse effects of narcissistic abuse and transgenerational trauma amplified by the patriarchal structure of Japanese society”).

Another way to think of it is that this a story of the uncovering of a new outlook on life. Sometimes, one realizes that a bad situation can be good, that bad luck also implies luck, and everything takes on a new meaning. More importantly, the story manages to describe that exact gesture that allows to realize it and be able, for a limited time, to perceive both aspects: flipping the coin, and looking at both sides. This dramatic gesture is made very simply, following one of many lessons about transience, which (for some reason) has been heard louder this time by the character. It is a beautiful text.

The second novella in the book, Ninety-nine Kisses, is about sisterhood and the specific erotic tension it creates during puberty: being one alone, or being whole together (pop-psycho: differentiation or fusion). Four sisters stuck in a seemingly unending puberty fall in love with the same boy. One of them lives through the other three, not willing to part ways, tempted to become what they need so none of them would escape the sorority - then they would have everything they need among them.

Once again, going outside the current doxa allows for a fresh yet not new view onto things. The many names and categories of disorders, dysfunctions, etc. hide the fact that these are very old, human problems, with very old, simple but difficult solutions. The hard part is to make these old things feel new so they can still reach us, and this book manages it well. (There I keep thinking about that IQ bell curve midwit meme)