With the recent death of Japanese horror author, Koji Suzuki, I thought it might be nice to revisit one of my favorite horror anthologies and do a bit of a deep dive over the next seven days.

I would hate to try and figure out a precise location on a list but if I had to pick something like Doug’s Top Horror Anthologies, Koji Suzuki’s Dark Water would be on it. Next to folk like Reggie Oliver, Ramsey Campbell, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, and Thomas Ligotti. The seven stories — plus a quick-ish wrap-around to enforce the themes — were pretty influential to me years ago when I lucked up and found a copy thanks to Vertical.

With the May 8, 2026 death of Koji Suzuki, I was of an idea that rereading at least some of his work could be nice. Then the “pun” of seven days for seven stories followed soon after.

I figured it could be interesting to soft-launch a concept I had for this blog but have yet to visit: Story by Story. Go through an anthology and do varying degrees of deep dives into each one. The horror genre is full of important short stories and it is hard to review anthologies on a story-by-story basis without going overlong. This will be a blend.

Starting tomorrow (as of when I click post), I’ll take one story from Dark Water per day and give a few general words and then include a second section for deeper reading with spoilers clearly marked.

Re: The Translation

I picked up a copy of Dark Water‘s ebook via Kobo but for some reason it is devoid of the translator and similar details. As far as I can tell, it is identical to the Vertical version which was translated by Glynne Walley. It also misprints “First Edition” as “FISRT EDITION.”

Fix your boats, Kobo.