Strange Pictures

Strange Pictures is structured around the investigation into four main drawings: Naomi’s childhood drawing of the house, child, tree, and bird; Yuki’s drawing of her own death in childbirth; Yuta’s drawing of his apartment building; and Miura’s drawing of a mountainside view. Each drawing is analyzed by people with varying degrees of expertise, but most are only partially understood. The novel posits that artistic creations such as these, upon careful analysis, do offer a glimpse into the mind of the artist, but they are not fully transparent representations of the complexity of the artist’s mind.

In keeping with this, the novel’s investigations are not entirely fruitless; however, they do run up against dead ends. Iwata and Kumai eventually realize that Miura’s drawing is meant to create a false impression of his time of death, but they are never able to understand his intentions for creating it. Sasaki and Kurihara eventually realize how Yuki’s drawing should be put together and see that it predicts her own death in childbirth, but they have no understanding of how she might have arrived at this conclusion or why she would not have spoken up to save herself. Such gaps in understanding point to the ambiguity of human motivations.