Books To Read by Japanese Authors

In a remote seaside town outside of Tokyo, Kotoko makes her way along a seashell path, lured by whispers of an enigmatic restaurant whose kagezen, or traditional meals offered in remembrance of loved ones, promise a reunion with the departed. At the Chibineko Kitchen, a soul-nourishing meal in the company of the resident kitten will transport you back in time to reunite with departed loved ones — for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, The Midnight Library, and Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away.

A new selection of Yukio Mishima’s (author of Spring Snow and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea) short stories from the 1960s — his final decade — Voices of the Fallen Heroes offers a unique glimpse into the mind of one of Japan’s greatest writers. Available in English for the first time, and carefully selected by a team of expert translators, these captivating stories serve as the perfect introduction to Mishima’s work, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Set in contemporary suburban Japan, Our Colors is the story of Sora Itoda: A 16-year-old aspiring painter who experiences his world in synesthetic hues of blues and reds. He wants to live honestly as a young gay man in high school, but that is still not acceptable in Japanese society. Sora’s world changes forever when he meets Mr. Amamiya, a middle-aged gentleman who is the owner of a local coffee shop, and who is completely, unapologetically out as a gay man. Mr. Amamiya paid a high price for his freedom of identity, and when a figure from his past suddenly appears, it becomes a prime example of just how complicated life can be.

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father. The father-daughter duo are “food detectives.” Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories — dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

Think of a time when you were worried about something, but then you suddenly realized how insignificant it was. Isn’t it amazing how much lighter you felt? The key is to focus only on the here and now. By doing so, you free yourself from unnecessary anxiety, and your mind will be at peace. In Don’t Worry, you will learn to stop comparing yourself to others, obsessing over the little things, and absorbing too much information and, instead, start acting and thinking positively instead of worrying. You’ll enjoy a calmer, more relaxed, more positive version of yourself as a result.

Yayoi, a 19-year-old woman from a seemingly loving middle-class family, has lately been haunted by the feeling that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. Her premonition grows stronger day by day and, as if led by it, she decides to move in with her mysterious aunt, Yukino. An instant bestseller in Japan when first published in 1988, The Premonition is finally available in English, translated by the celebrated Asa Yoneda.

Almost every afternoon, the Woman in the Purple Skirt sits on the same park bench. Unbeknownst to her, she is being watched — by the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, who is always perched just out of sight, monitoring where she goes, what she eats, whom she speaks to. Studiously deadpan and chillingly voyeuristic, The Woman in the Purple Skirt explores envy, loneliness, power dynamics, and the vulnerability of unmarried women in a taut, suspenseful narrative about the sometimes desperate desire to be seen.

A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanor and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he’s ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags. A witty, moving story of adolescent love and loss from the acclaimed, prize-winning author of Breasts and Eggs.

Each year, the flowering of cherry blossoms marks the beginning of spring. But if it weren’t for the pioneering work of an English eccentric, Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram, Japan’s beloved cherry blossoms could have gone extinct. As much a history of the cherry blossom in Japan as it is the story of one remarkable man, The Sakura Obsession follows the flower from its significance as a symbol of the imperial court, through the dark days of the Second World War, and up to the present-day worldwide fascination with this iconic blossom.

When 34-year-old Ms. Shibata gets a new job to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that as the only woman at her new workplace, she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day, she announces that she can’t clear away her coworkers’ dirty cups — because she’s pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is … Ms. Shibata is not pregnant. But pregnant Ms. Shibata is treated better by her colleagues. But she has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Before long, it becomes all-absorbing, and the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve.

Following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, a young man in Japan finds a stray dog outside a convenience store. The dog’s tag says “Tamon,” a name evocative of the guardian deity of the north. The man decides to keep Tamon, becoming the first in a series of owners on the dog’s five-year journey to find his beloved first owner, Hikaru, a boy who has not spoken since the tsunami. An agent of fate, Tamon is a gift to everyone who welcomes him into their life.

“Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery!” shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn’t been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet — he’s been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on ‘homestay’ in the body of 14-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. It looks like Makoto doesn’t have a single friend, and his family doesn’t seem to care about him. But as the soul begins to live Makoto’s life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him, and sees their true colors more clearly, shedding light on Makoto’s misunderstandings.

Junichirō Tanizaki’s evocation of a proud Osaka family in decline during the years immediately before World War II is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the 20th century.  Filled with vignettes of a vanishing way of life, The Makioka Sisters is a poignant yet unsparing portrait of a family — and an entire society — sliding into the abyss of modernity.

Tsukiko, 38, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, “Sensei,” in a local bar. He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love. Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a story of loneliness and love that defies age.

Following the death of her son, Mieko Toganō takes an increasing interest in the personal affairs of her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko. Devastated by her loss, she skillfully manipulates the relationships between Yasuko and the two men who are in love with her, encouraging a dalliance that will have terrible consequences. Meanwhile, hidden in the shadows, is Mieko’s mentally-handicapped daughter, who has her own role to play in her mother’s bizarre schemes. In Masks, Enchi has crafted a stunning and understated novel of seduction and infidelity.

Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Written by the court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon, ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book offers a fascinating exploration of life among the nobility at the height of the Heian period, describing the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion, and whim dominated, while harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance. Moving elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society, and her own flirtations, Sei Shonagon provides a witty and intimate window on a woman’s life at court in classical Japan.

The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his readers will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.

Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world’s first novel — and is certainly one of its finest. Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic.

Kazu is dead. Born in 1933, his life has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo. Kazu’s life in the city began and ended in that park; he arrived there to work as a laborer in the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and ended his days living in the vast homeless village in the park, traumatized by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and shattered by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics. Through Kazu’s eyes, we learn the intimate details of his personal story, how loss and society’s inequalities and constrictions spiraled towards this ghostly fate, with moments of beauty and grace just out of reach.

This novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru’s longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe . . .  With his crooked tail — a sign of good fortune — and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.

No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro — meaning “heart” — is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls “Sensei.”

This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot’s ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society. At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds, and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath.

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata has created a story for the ages — a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.