There are as many reasons to love Japanese fiction as there are to love the fiction of any culture or country, your own or otherwise. But it can be difficult sometimes to know where to start. Maybe you’re interested in specific aspects of Japanese culture. Maybe you just want to broaden your reading horizons. Whatever your reason, I hope you’ll be emboldened and find your new favourite read!
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.
Hi there. It’s a great list, but I’m dismayed that you haven’t named any of the translators whose work brought these novels to the English-reading public. They are as much as part of the works as the original authors are. Please consider adding their names.