About The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window
The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is a manga series by Tomoko Yamashita, published in English by SuBLime. Yamashita is also the creator behind Ikoku Nikki, which is where the 2025 anime, Journal with Witch, was adapted from. The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window also received an anime adaption in the Fall of 2021.
The series follows Kousuke Mikado, a bookstore worker, who has always been different from everyone. Ever since he can remember, he can see spirits.While he’s made strides in ways to manage this ailment, he is terrified by what he sees and feels isolated because no one can relate. That all changes when he meets the mysterious Rihito Hayakawa. Hayakawa is an exorcist who enlist Mikado to help him with the odd exorcism jobs he receives. As Mikado starts working with Hayakawa, things just get weirder. Suddenly, Mikado is wrapped up in all that Hayakawa is and can’t seem to leave him alone. But does he even want to? At the center of all the odd jobs lies something even more sinister that may involve both Mikado and Hayakawa.
My Thoughts
I watched The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window anime as it was airing in 2021 and was instantly in love with the story. Not only was it a BL but it featured supernatural elements? I was locked in. So of course, once the anime finished the manga went right on my TBR list. When I had to opportunity to review the first 5 volumes for Bookwalker, I jumped at the chance!
An Understanding
Something that Yamashita is incredible at doing as a storyteller is telling you something in between the lines of something else. From the start, the big “gag” in The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is that the exorcism Hayakawa uses Mikado to do feels good, akin to sex. A lot of the language and phrasing feel sexual. The jokes go on about doing it alone versus doing it together, opening up, letting Hiyakawa in. But in the moment of reading, it doesn’t feel as sexy as it sounds. Almost like it isn’t about sex at all.
What lies at the heart of this story is human connection. Everything starts and ends there. For Mikado, he’s been longing human connection all his life. He’s felt like an outsider dealing with this spiritual awareness and it isn’t until he meets Hayakawa that he doesn’t feel alone anymore. Then his world also starts expanding with the other people they meet: Erika, Hanzawa, and Mukae.
For Hiyakawa, from what we’ve seen so far, he’s had “connection” but the connections have been superficial. They’ve been for the purpose of gaining rather than actually connecting. Hiyakawa had been forced to endure meting people time at time again, chipping at himself in order to provide for others. This has left Hiyakawa broken, unable to understand human relationships at their core.
For Hiyakawa and Mikado, two people with deep scars, their union is magical. It is like sex: the innate pleasure that arises from your perfect match. The exploration of the body and the self in sex is fun, intoxicating, addicting. It can also be overwhelming to experience so much pleasure, scary even. This isn’t unlike the forming of a relationship. Where it’s fun and addicting, but the more you become vulnerable, the more you start believing and trusting the other, it feels scary.
Overall
These first five volumes, about 30 chapters, of the story are incredible. As Mikado is getting deeper with Hiyakawa, his confusion and fears only increase. But this only makes him want to know Hiyakawa more. Hiyakawa is unable to let him in but I think he will soon have no choice, with the church coming into the story and the mysterious professor Erika is working for. Although I know the ending from the anime, I’m excited to see how the events take place in the manga and how it differs.
The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window
Story and Art: Tomoko Yamashita
Translation: Vanessa Satone
Touch-up Art and Lettering: Yukiko Whitley
Editor: Leyla Aker
Publisher: SuBLime
The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is available now.
Thank you BookWalker for volumes 1 – 5 to review!
