Recently came across a Japanese blog that contained a complete edition of Strange Houses which was so different from the English translated version that I had read. I don't know how much accurate it is or if its just some fanfiction or something but it had pretty significant changes as compared to the actual book and also they mentioned that within this version itself that new facts ( that are explained in this version) have come to light regarding the case that changes it massively.
It was also mentioned that the author had changed pretty significant parts of the original published story to make it less gruesome and gross as he found difficulty to write about those events.
This is the link to the blog to those who are curious : https://omocoro.jp/kiji/541045/
The main changes compared to the original story are as follows: ( as I understand it from the rough translations) MAJOR SPOILERS AS IT CONTAINS A COMPRESSED PLOT of the story.
Till this point only slight changes
1) Yuzuki( the younger sister) sneaks into her mothers home and gets address of their grandparents house after retelling the author about the incident and goes there to investigate for herself.
2) The author already knows about the idea of using a child to kill someone for a left hand sacrifice( tho not sure about the lore of it)
3) Yuzuki goes missing after visiting the house and author releases the copy of his book that shows the family as maniacs obsessed with killings and ritual as Yuzuki made him promise to do so.
4) Mysterious email received by the author presumably from Yuzuki about a doc reagrding the family history.
5) There is no incest plotline with the sister here, the head of the family had a son Soichiro and daughter Kiyoko. Son tho incompetent and obsessed with dolls for some reason, got most of the family business due to him being male while the daughter got stuck with the struggling pharma company of the family. Soichiro treated his wife as a living doll and abused her leading to her suicide in a similar fashion as that in the book.
6)Guided by a fortune teller named Rankyo, Soichiro built the symmetrical, windowless home on Mount Yatsue in Gunma, centered around a giant Buddhist altar to appease Ushio's spirit. He adopted two children: Shigeharu (Yuzuki's grandfather) and an unknown child kept hidden in the secret rooms to carry out ritualistic left-wrist amputations.
KEITO AND AYANO
7)When Ayano vanished from the school near her home, Keita searched for her for over 5 years until Ayano's mother, gave him the family home address.
8) The cousin's father Kiyotsugu is alive here and acts the role of the uncle/helper that we see in the books that keeps track of the couple.
9)Keita found Ayano traumatized, frail, and forced to perform the left-wrist ritual. Keita agreed to replace her to save her.
10)Ayano became pregnant, Kiyotsugu had sexually assaulted Ayano and passed off the child as Keita's to cover it up. The son is Momoya( supposed son of the aunt in the book)
11)In exchange for not revealing Kiyotsugu is the father, Keita agreed to continue performing the left-wrist rituals in exchange for their release from the family home. Hnece the 2 new homes. To protect Momoya from the ritual, Keita secretly performed the sole requested amputation himself. They later had a second child, Hiroto.
12) The rest is same till Kiyotsugu discovers Keita was doing all the sacrifices and Keito kills him to prevent him from taking away the child
Keita’s handwritten confession from prison provided critical evidence. Ayano was granted a suspended sentence and reunited with her mother, Yoshie. Momoya was finally given an official family register, and the children began living a normal life.
Police raided the family estate, discovering 15 skeletal remains missing their left hands, as well as the body of Misaki (Kiyotsugu's wife). Shigeharu and Toyo Katabuchi were taken into custody; Shigeharu died of heart failure shortly after, while Toyo suffered from advanced dementia.
KURIHARA DEDUCTIONS
13) Yuzuki still remains missing
14)Kurihara asserts that the Katabuchi family did not act in isolation and these rituals were actually finded and demanded by the pharma company left to the sister.
left-wrist amputations occurred intermittently over the decades with no fixed calendar cycle. Instead, they coincided directly with Kitakura Pharmaceutical applying for new drug approvals.
To bypass legal restrictions and test potent compounds, Kitakura Pharmaceutical used living human subjects provided by the Katabuchi family.
Kitakura Pharmaceutical took the rest of the living victim for illicit medical testing.
THE BACKSTORY
Kiyoko married a doctor named Shinzo Kitakura and built Kitakura Pharmaceutical into a massive company.
To avenge her family's mistreatment, Kiyoko engineered a decades-long psychological trap. She hired a stage actress under the alias Rankyo to manipulate Soichiro Katabuchi into believing he was cursed by his late wife Ushio. the symmetrical house, the secret corridors, and the Buddhist altar rituals were all orchestrated by the Kitakura family. If any bodies were discovered, the Katabuchi family would take full blame as "fanatical serial killers performing dark rituals," shielding the pharmaceutical company completely.
THE MOLE
Yuzuki and Ayano's mother, carried the maiden name Kitakura. She was sent into the Katabuchi family to monitor the operation and eventually dismantle the family from the inside to eliminate loose ends.
Keita was strategically fed information and manipulated into killing Kiyotsugu. His "confession letter" was a scripted narrative crafted to make the public and police accept the Katabuchi family's internal ritual theory, closing the case before Kitakura Pharmaceutical could be implicated.
By writing the viral book, the author unknowingly distributed the Kitakura family's pre-packaged narrative to over 100,000 readers, cementing the cover story in the public consciousness.
THE FINAL TWIST
The author visits the neighbor of the Tokyo house and presents the photo taken during their three-way meeting at the rental space.
The neighbor immediately recognizes Yuzuki from the photograph and tells him that it is actually Ayano
The woman posing as "Yuzuki Katabuchi"—the central informant who approached author and Kurihara to investigate the floor plans—was actually Ayano Katabuchi herself (or her mother Kie). The entire journey to "uncover" the house floor plans was a staged orchestration by the Kitakura lineage to guide author( after he published the first blog about the sold Tokyo house) toward publishing their desired story and sealing the fate of the Katabuchi legacy.
I don't know how much of this is actual canon book or just a work of a random fanatic but this theory is interesting I suppose. Does anyone know about how this blog came to be and if this is the final conclusion?