Also, a pro tip: The Akutagawa Prize is a twice-annual prize awarded to new or rising authors. The winning novels often get translated into English, and the works are almost always short. If you’re looking to dip your toe into Japanese fiction or looking to try something very new and cutting-edge, finding the Akutagawa winners are good ways to find something exciting. Books that won are marked with a * after the title, and authors who won for a different work are also marked with a * after their name.

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

You might already know who Murakami is. You may have seen copies of his massive novel 1Q84 in a bookstore or heard tell of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. But if you’re not ready to jump in with both feet, start with his short fiction. The word “surreal” gets bandied about, but Murakami is more like a modern Jungian, writing directly from his unconscious, exploring archetypes and shadows. He taps into very universal ideas with very straightforward, simple prose. But it’s simple the way water is simple: it’s always refreshing and feels, when you’re reading, like you’re taking in something utterly necessary. Each of the stories in this collection is very different, but has that same essential quality.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Yes, Haruki Murakami gets two books on here, partially because he’s one of the most famous living authors in the world, and partially because the two books are extremely different. Norwegian Wood is a departure from his usual style, and it’s also the book that launched his fame. It’s a story of intense nostalgia, longing, and first love versus new love. The impact of this book really can’t be overstated: my Japanese Lit teacher in college changed his major from engineering to Japanese and therefore the entire course of his life because of this book. Novelist Clarissa Goenawan has told us it rekindled her love for stories. It’s not to be underestimated, and not to be missed.

Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

I hate stories about cheerfully tragic invalids. It’s never been my experience of chronic illness, and it creates all kinds of problematic expectations for sufferers and the people around them. Which is why I love this book. It begins quite frankly: “It’s true: Tsugumi really was an unpleasant young woman.” Tsugumi is furious, stubborn, and wild. She also has a severe health condition. She’s unapologetic about all of it. I love her moxie and the whole story, told from the perspective of her beloved cousin, of a last summer on the beach.

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami*

If you’re a horror fan you might know Ryu Murakami as the author of Audition. Otherwise this “other” Murakami hasn’t quite achieved the level of recognition in the English-reading markets as Haruki. His appeal is more niche, full of graphic violence, absurd horror, and vicious cultural critiques. This novel, about a guide to the red light district of Tokyo who’s hired by a serial killer, is visceral and mesmerising and somehow never feels gratuitous.

Sixty-Nine by Ryu Murakami

Yes, both Murakamis get two books on the list, since Sixty-Nine is also a massive departure from the dark pop Ryu Murakami is known for. And although it’s deliberately titillating, Sixty-Nine is about the year, not the act—and also about the kind of person who snickers when they hear “69.” A pseudo-memoir of his own youthful obsession with rock ‘n’ roll ‘n’ rebellion, this book is exuberant, irreverent, and so much fun.

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda

If you want to learn more about Japanese legends but don’t want to be scared out of your wits, this collection of stories is for you. A modern setting blends the human world and the spirit world with insight and care, offering optimistic updates to tragic tales and clever twists on old stories. The stories are also actually short, great for commutes or stolen moments.

Star by Yukio Mishima

Mishima’s life is as varied and intense as his works, and the narrative of his death sometimes overshadows his fictional writing. That’s always felt a bit unfair to me, since his prose is lucid and bright. His genius, however, is in using that luminosity to conceal rather than illuminate. Mishima’s writing belies the dark and lurid topics he revels in describing: stories of fanaticism, eroticism, and violence taken to extremes are the cornerstones of his oeuvre. To see if his work is for you, try this short novelette about a movie star, an obsessed fan, and how fame twists the spirit.

The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami

Kawakami is probably better-known for Strange Weather in Tokyo, but this novel of two lonely people quietly finding each other is my favourite. Its gentle prose and surface level interactions over food and neighbourhood goings-on both conceal and reveal a deeply tender romance.

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa

This is an intensely compassionate story about marginalised people, and the communities that form despite rejection. Sentaro works in a failing dorayaki (red bean pancake) shop, quietly depressed until an elderly woman approaches him and asks for a job. Skeptical at first, he comes to admire her tireless quest for perfect red bean paste. But where has she come from, and why are her hands shaped differently? What he discovers inspires him not to relentless hard work for its own sake, but a deeper sense of meaning.

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

This novel is sadly all the more relevant today than even when it was published in English, when it coincided too closely with the Columbine school shooting to really make it in the US market. A fascist state isn’t content to pit citizens against each other in the usual ways. It goes further: it forces children to kill each other, even providing the terrain and the weapons. Dystopian horror-satire hits a little close to home these days, but if you can manage it it’s definitely worth a read.

Bakemonogatari by Nisioisin

Light novels are a category in Japan that doesn’t really have an equivalent here. “Beach reads” or “airport fiction” aren’t quite the same, although if a paperback mystery novel felt like reading an episode of CSI, that’s a bit closer. A lot of Japanese light novels feel like anime or manga. This series in particular is has two “episodes” per volume, and a central convention: a high-schooler named Araragi had a run-in with a vampire, and now solves monster-related mysteries with the help of his oddball mentor and cranky girlfriend. The stories start out a bit wacky, but every single time I read one I find a surprising and thoughtful insight by the end.

The Stones Cry Out* by Hikaru Okuizumi

The past merges with the present in all kinds of ways. Tsuyoshi thinks he understands this as an amateur geologist, lovingly collecting specimens and living a quiet life. But violent seismic shifts affect him as well as the earth beneath his feet, and as he struggles to understand acts of violence, he has to adjust the ways he understands time. This is a novel I would very deliberately call profound, and it still affects me many years after I first read it.

Inheritance from Mother by Minae Mizumura

An intensely psychological study of a woman named Mitsuki, this book asks big questions about how women are expected to age in a youth-obsessed world. While dealing with a serially unfaithful husband and a stressful job, Mitsuki also must take on increasing duties of care for her terminally ill mother. Her mother is not an easy woman—but what is easy, and does Mitsuki want that? I bought this on a whim and didn’t think I would like it much, but was almost immediately drawn in and couldn’t put it down. Its setting is particular, but its themes are absolutely universal.

Ms. Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami

Pushkin Press did a series of translations* for Japanese novellas, and my favourite out of all of them was Ms. Ice Sandwich, told from the perspective of a young boy with a crush on his local convenience store worker. A melancholy-tinged story of growing up, this is particularly great on a rainy afternoon, perhaps with a sandwich of your own.

Convenience Store Woman* by Sayaka Murata

Speaking of convenience store workers, this runaway hit is about a woman who just doesn’t fit in. She’s found ways of approximating the kinds of interactions she needs to have with other people, but what she really loves is the calm, orderly world of the convenience store where she works. It gives her life meaning and purpose, and through her, we can see the beauty in what might seem like ordinary displays of chocolate or cases of milk. Yet with pressure from her family and coworkers to have a “normal” life, will she trade her unusual devotion for convention? Finding your place in the world is hard for everyone, no matter who or where they are, and this is a quirkily beautiful expression of both the frustration and the fulfilment of discovering life on your own terms.

Do you have any other recommendations? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Getting Started With Translated Japanese Fiction appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Though it’s found at the end of the book, I would suggest reading the Inspiration for the Stories section at the back before embarking on these tales. The explanations are brief and give a lot of context if you’re not familiar with Japanese myths. Even if you are, there are helpful tidbits and some less popular stories to give more weight to the modern tales. I’d also note that these aren’t ghost stories, per se. They’re yokai stories.

Yokai include ghosts, demons, and other supernatural entities. It’s often translated as “monster.” Older translations sometimes substitute “fairy” for yokai, which is culturally inaccurate, but has some useful parallels. Unlike “monster,” which has a distinctly negative connotation, yokai and fairies are far more ambiguous. They can be dangerous, but also mischievous, helpful, or entirely disinterested; they run the gamut from foolish to clever; and most of all, they have a society. They don’t want to eat us; they want to interact with us. That’s key to understanding this book in particular.

It’s also worth noting that the term yokai (妖怪) contains the character for woman (女). The combination 妖 means “disaster” but also “attractive.” It’s important that English speakers not give Japanese characters mystical or exoticised importance, but as with gendered nouns from Germanic or Romance language, we can definitely infer that there are some gendered things going on here. If nothing else, it’s clearly Matsuda’s starting point: women’s changing roles, expectations placed on women, how men interact with women, and how women interact with each other are all themes running through the stories.

But enough etymology! Matsuda starts Where the Wild Ladies Are off strong start with a tale of hair. Yes, hair. Even such an unassuming topic is fertile ground for discussion. After all, men can go bald with few social repercussions; women, on the other hand, are simply not allowed. Hair must be on the head, fashionable and well-kept, and removed from every other part of the body. The narrator of “Smartening Up” is indulging in the time-honoured tradition of changing her hair to mark her breakup. And, like most women, she sees this as an opportunity for empowerment and change, not just obligation and oppression. But thanks to the interference of a pestering ghost, her hair care goes much further than expected. Matsuda pushes the dichotomy of oppression vs. empowerment and shows us how it’s not just either/or. There’s fertile ground for all sorts of strange and wonderful things in this land where wild ladies flourish.

The narrator in “Quite a Catch” has also had a breakup, but her outlook is more cheerful from the get-go. Not only was she the one who ended it with her boyfriend, she also has a new love in her life—her ghost girlfriend. This story is so tender and swoon-worthy that I read it twice in succession. It was also the story that helped me realise that this book was not at all what I was expecting. Where the Wild Ladies Are isn’t about quick scares or disturbing the reader. Sure, you might be a bit unnerved by skeletons or apparitions, but that’s not their fault. Why is it all about you, after all? They have their own stuff going on!

The two ladies in “The Peony Lanterns” just want to sell you their high-quality lanterns. The whole group of workers in “Team Sarashina” want to do their best work, as do the odd menage a trois in “Having a Blast.” Human or yokai, alive or dead, those who exist want to feel useful. They want to accomplish things, and feel, if not joy, then at least satisfaction.

But the modern world doesn’t make that easy. When modernity overtakes everything, what do the ghosts do? They’re quite literally the avatars of the past. What place do they have when place itself is so unstable, proud castles turned to tourist attractions and “old” now meaning “a few decades” instead of “a few centuries”? Matsuda most obviously addresses this in “A New Recruit,” in which a ghost is losing her haunting-ground to a renovation. She’s offered a new gig by a strange company run by an even stranger man, the mysterious Mr. Tei.

Mr. Tei is a Japanese man of Chinese descent.  His name means that humans assume he is a foreigner; his humanity means that yokai assume he can’t perceive them. But Mr. Tei straddles many borders, showing us the mutability of categories like “foreign.” Are yokai foreigners too, behaving against custom and common sense? Or are they essentially Japanese, and is it humans who have forgotten how to act? It’s another case of both/and for Matsuda, who draws further parallels with questions about gender and society. Are women are the first foreigners, still trying to navigate a society built first for and by men? Adapting is a kind of magic, as in “A Fox’s Life,” but so is staunch resistance, as in “A Day Off.” There’s not judgment here; instead, there’s possibility. The possibility of a satisfying life, and also the possibility of connection. Living by one’s own rules can be lonely, but these yokai and humans forge connections as well as paths forward.

Mr. Tei, his associates, and his company tie together the disparate stories, providing a place of meeting rather than alienation. The links between the tales are not meant to unveil any kind of grand mystery. They’re mostly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it asides that gently suggest how very connected we all are: to each other, and to the world of spirits. As certain characters pop up repeatedly, we see the suggestions of progress. A grieving young man mentioned in the first story takes on new responsibility and eventually inspires a sense of purpose in others by the last tale. A woman with low self-esteem gradually finds herself. The list goes on, not in any greatly revolutionary way, just in the way that life (and un-life) does: gradually, with a little help, and a little hope.

Where The Wild Ladies Are is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of October 20th 2020.

Will you be picking up Where The Wild Ladies Are? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

In this witty and exuberant collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales, humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services–from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime.

A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits and cleans while a single mother is out working. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these and many other spirited women–who also happen to be ghosts. This is a realm in which jealousy, stubbornness, and other excessive “feminine” passions are not to be feared or suppressed, but rather cultivated; and, chances are, a man named Mr. Tei will notice your talents and recruit you, dead or alive (preferably dead), to join his mysterious company.

In this witty and exuberant collection of linked stories, Aoko Matsuda takes the rich, millenia-old tradition of Japanese folktales–shapeshifting wives and foxes, magical trees and wells–and wholly reinvents them, presenting a world in which humans are consoled, guided, challenged, and transformed by the only sometimes visible forces that surround them.

The post Review: Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda appeared first on The Nerd Daily.