Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino’s award-winning literary mystery Out . 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... (more)

The Face of Another

by Kobo Abe

Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis , this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him. His only entry back into the... (more)

Strangers

by Taichi Yamada

Middle-aged, jaded and divorced, TV scriptwriter Harada is forced to set up home in his office, situated in a high-rise apartment block overlooking Tokyo's busy Route 8. One night, nostalgic for his lost childhood, he decides to visit the entertainment district of Asakusa, the city's dilapidated old downtown area, and there, at the theatre, he meets a man who looks exactly like his long-dead father. So begins... (more)

In Search of a Distant Voice

by Taichi Yamada

Kazama Tsuneo is an immigration officer in Tokyo, struggling to live a 'normal' life after an event that happened eight years previously, on the other side of the world, in Portland, Oregon. When he is seized one day by a strange emotional fit, his life threatens to spiral out of control. With his arranged marriage looming, his problems worsen following the emergence of a strange voice - a woman who is trying to... (more)

The Tattoo Murder Case (Soho Crime)

by Akimitsu Takagi

Miss Kinue Nomura survived World War II only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs left behind. Gone is that part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos ever rendered by her late father. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor, must assist his detective brother who is in charge of the case, because he was Kinue's secret lover and the first person on the murder scene. The Tattoo Murder Case... (more)

Honeymoon to Nowhere (Soho Crime)

by Akimitsu Takagi

Etsuko has fallen in love with a shy, studious lecturer at a university. But she has to tell her parents she's pregnant to force their agreement to her marriage. Their objection is to the rest of her fianc's family: his father was a war criminal; his deceased younger brother, a murderer. His only respectable relative is a research chemist who says he's too sick to come to the wedding. And then the groom is called... (more)

The Three Cornered World

by Natsume Soseki

The Three Cornered World is the novelistic expression of the contrast between the Western ethical view of reality and the Eastern ethical view by one of Japan's most beloved authors.

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Oe, Kenzaburo)

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Oe, Kenzaburo)

by Kenzaburo Oe

Oe's dark musings on moral failure have come to symbolize an alienated generation in postwar Japan. This novel recounts the exploits of 15 teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime. When plague breaks out, the villagers flee, leaving the boys blockaded inside the empty village. The boys' brief, doomed attempt to build autonomous lives of self-respect, love, and tribal valor fails... (more)

Real World

by Natsuo Kirino

A stunning new work of the feminist noir that Natsuo Kirino defined and made her own in her novels Out and Grotesque. In a crowded residential suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer and endless “cram school” sessions meant to ensure entry into good colleges. There’s Toshi, the dependable one; Terauchi, the great student; Yuzan, the sad... (more)

I Haven't Dreamed of Flying for a While

by Taichi Yamada

After accident, illness, and the loss of his job and marriage, forty-eight-year-old Taura meets Mutsuko, setting his already derailed life even further off course. Their first encounter is, unseen, in an overcrowded hospital. It later transpires that the mysterious Mutsuko is in her late sixties, but when they next meet she is younger, in her forties, and the two seemingly fall in love. With Mutsuko's age... (more)

The Tale of the Heike

by Helen C. McCullough, Yukinaga

The Tale of the Heike is one of the masterworks of Japanese literature, ranking with The Tal of Genji in quality and prestige. This new translation is not only far more readable than earlier ones, it is also much more faithful to the content and style of the original. Intended for the general audience as well as the specialist, this edition is highly annotated.

Japanese tales of mystery & imagination

by Edogawa Rampo

Hirai Taro (1894-1965), much more familiar as Edogawa Rampo, was the first modern writer of mysteries in Japan. The author’s pen name is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe. He was the author of novels, short stories, and studies of the mystery genre.

The Diving Pool: Three Novellas

by Stephen Snyder, Yo?ko Ogawa

The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authors From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent. A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high... (more)

Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy (Japan's Modern Writers)

Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy (Japan's Modern Writers)

by Osamu Dazai

Blue Bamboo is a collection of seven short stories by one of Japan's preeminent postwar writers and prose stylists, Osamu Dazai. Not the typical romantic fantasies so often seen in Japanese writing, filled with water sprites and vengeful ghosts, these stories are a mixture of fantastic allegory, slightly skewed fables, and affecting romantic tales. Revealing the wide range of Dazai's imaginative powers, they also... (more)

Wild Geese

by Ogai Mori, Sanford Goldstein, Kingo Ochiai

In The Wild Geese , prominent Japanese novelist Ogai Mori offers a poignant story of unfulfilled love, set against the background of the dizzying social change accompanying the fall of the Meiji regime. The young heroine, Otama, is forced by poverty to become a moneylender's mistress. She is surrounded by skillfully-drawn characters—her weak-willed father, her virile and calculating lover (and his suspicious... (more)

Vibrator

by Mari Akasaka

Rei Hayakawa, a lonely, bulimic freelance writer with a drinking problem, wanders into a convenience store. She's swaddled in her coat and scarf, while her thoughts – of alienation, of hunger, of the need for gin and white wine – drift in via stream-of-consciousness. A trucker named Okabe walks in, deliberately grazes her behind, and at the same time, Rei's cell phone, set on vibrate, goes off over her heart. Rei... (more)

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 25 Stories

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 25 Stories

by Haruki Murakami

Following the best-selling triumph of "Kafka on the Shore"---daringly original, wrote Steven Moore in "The Washington Post Book World"

Negima!: Magister Negi Magi: Book 1

Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, Volume 1

by Ken Akamatsu

DON’T TOUCH THAT WAND! Ten-year-old prodigy Negi Springfield, has just graduated from magic academy. He dreams of becoming a master wizard. Instead he’s sent to Japan to teach English . . . at an all-girls high school! All the students are delighted with their cute new teacher—except for Asuna, who resents Negi for replacing the teacher she secretly has a crush on. Although he is forbidden to display his... (more)

After DarkHaruki Murakami

After Dark

by Haruki Murakami

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

by Gail Tsukiyama

“Just remember,” Yoshio said quietly to his grandsons. “Every day of your lives, you must always be sure what you’re fighting for.” It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers are growing up with their loving grandparents, who inspire them to dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows unusual skill at the national obsession of sumo... (more)

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Browse Subjects: japanese literature

Top Books

by Natsuo Kirino

by Kobo Abe

by Taichi Yamada

by Taichi Yamada

by Akimitsu Takagi

by Akimitsu Takagi

by Natsume Soseki

by Kenzaburo Oe

by Natsuo Kirino

by Taichi Yamada

by Helen C. McCullough, Yukinaga

by Edogawa Rampo

by Stephen Snyder, Yo?ko Ogawa

by Osamu Dazai

by Ogai Mori, Sanford Goldstein, Kingo Ochiai

by Mari Akasaka

by Haruki Murakami

by Ken Akamatsu

by Haruki Murakami

by Gail Tsukiyama