A Wild Sheep Chase - Not Your Typical Creepy Story

My assumptions, this week, were thrown out the window. Reading A Wild Sheep Chase, I had heard it was a sort of mystery. Having previously taken a Mystery and Thrillers writing class, I assumed an investigation of some sort. With the book starting off dealing with the disappearance of The Rat, a close friend of the unnamed main character, I assumed a more typical investigation would be the plot. I did not expect a magical mind-corrupting sheep, an inhuman representative of Japan’s most powerful figures, and a woman whose ears had the power to attract anyone she wanted.


What I found most interesting about this book was the lack of focus on any good vs. evil dichotomy, which is more typically found in Western works of similar genres. Most Western mystery and horror works have a very clearly defined “good” side (the protagonist, their friends, etc.) and “evil” side (the monster, criminal, etc.). In A Wild Sheep Chase, however, everything just sort of happens to the protagonist. There are no stakes: he has no family, he has just quit his job, and honestly is just looking for something better to do with his life. He just accepts what happens to him for the most part. That is the world and that is what he must grapple with. There’s no true “good” or “evil” in the story. The closest to a sense of “evil” is perhaps is the representative threatening the protagonist and perhaps the sheep itself, if at all. This does not prevent the overall creepy feeling that pervades the text. The entire time I read the book, I felt like something was horribly wrong, besides the obvious of what is written on the page. Descriptions of the Sheep Professor, for example, made my stomach lurch and my skin crawl. The lack of Western mystery and horror expectations does not take away from the creepy atmosphere of the book.

These sort of themes are present throughout much of J-Horror. Many traditional unsettling Japanese stories don’t necessarily have a typical morality story. Unlike in the Western world, the idea of spirits and the like are much more accepted in Japanese culture. It’s not a story of questioning what is real and what isn’t. Usually they are stories of relationships, be it between humans, humans and spirits, humans and nature, et cetera. Much of the time it’s about restoring the balance between relationships, and the sacrifices that go along with that. A Wild Sheep Chase definitely captures these elements to create what feels like a more modern, traditional Japanese creepy folk story.