Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Women in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village. "Abe... (more)

The 47 Ronin Story

by John Allyn

47 Ronin Story is the classic Japanese story of Lord Asano of Ako and one of the bloodiest vendettas in Japan's feudal history. In a shocking clash between the warriors and the merchant class of seventeenth century Japan, there emerged the most unlikely set of heroes-the forty-seven ronin, or ex-samurai, of Ako.

The Makioka Sisters

by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

In Osaka in the years immediately before World War II, four aristocratic women try to preserve a way of life that is vanishing. As told by Junichiro Tanizaki, the story of the Makioka sisters forms what is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the twentieth century, a poignant yet unsparing portrait of a family–and an entire society–sliding into the abyss of modernity. Tsuruko, the eldest sister, clings... (more)

Japanese Tales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library)

Japanese Tales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library)

by Royall Tyler

Here are two hundred and twenty dazzling tales from medieval Japan, tales that welcome us into a fabulous, faraway world populated by saints and scoundrels, ghosts and magical healers, and a vast assortment of deities and demons. Stories of miracles, visions of hell, jokes, fables, and legends, these tales reflect the Japanese worldview during a classic period in Japanese civilization. Masterfully edited and... (more)

Spring Snow (Vintage International)

by Yukio Mishima

The first novel of Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of fertility Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders -- rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power. Among this rising new elite are the ambitious Matsugae, whose son... (more)

Snow Country (Vintage International)

by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker

To this haunting novel of wasted love, Kawabata brings the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. As he chronicles the affair between a wealthy dilettante and the mountain geisha who gives herself to him without illusions or regrets, one of Japan's greatest writers creates a work that is dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

Thousand Cranes

by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker

With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, the rival of his dead father's mistress. A tale of desire, regret, and sensual nostalgia, every gesture has a meaning, and even the most fleeting touch or casual utterance has the power to illuminate entire... (more)

I Am a Cat: Three Volumes in One

by Natsume, Soseki Natsume

Written over the course of 1904-6, Soseki’s comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. The New Yorker called it "a nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by... (more)

Almost Transparent Blue

by Ryu Murakami, Nancy Andrew

Almost Transparent Blue is a brutal tale of lost youth in a Japanese port town close to an American military base. Murakami?s image-intensive narrative paints a portrait of a group of friends locked in a destructive cycle of sex, drugs and rock?n?roll. The novel is all but plotless, but the raw and often violent prose takes us on a rollercoaster ride through reality and hallucination, highs and lows, in which the... (more)

Sixty-Nine

by Ryu Murakami, Ralph F. McCarthy

In 1969 we were seventeen. We listened to the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, the Grateful Dead, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan. We read Rimbaud, played guitars, smoked pot, fell in love, rebelled against the establishment, protested the war in Vietnam, barricaded our high school, and produced the first rock festival in our home town—a small city in a remote southwestern... (more)

Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami, Stephen Snyder

A surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today. Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and... (more)

The Tale of Genji

by Murasaki Shikibu

One of the world’s oldest novels and the greatest single work of Japanese literature, this 11th-century romance centers on the lives and loves of an emperor’s son. It offers a vast tapestry of the intrigues and rivalries of court life, as well as an exquisitely detailed portrayal of a decaying aristocracy. Rich in poetry and wordplay in addition to subtle social and psychological observations, this splendid... (more)

Runaway Horses (Vintage International)

by Yukio Mishima

The chronicle of a conspiracy and a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war--an era marked by depression, social change and political violence.

Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in... (more)

Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to... (more)

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel

by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: literature-japanese

The Woman in the Dunes

by Kobo Abe

The 47 Ronin Story

by John Allyn

The Makioka Sisters

by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Japanese Tales (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library)

by Royall Tyler

Spring Snow (Vintage International)

by Yukio Mishima

Snow Country (Vintage International)

by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker

Thousand Cranes

by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker

I Am a Cat: Three Volumes in One

by Natsume, Soseki Natsume

Almost Transparent Blue

by Ryu Murakami, Nancy Andrew

Sixty-Nine

by Ryu Murakami, Ralph F. McCarthy

Coin Locker Babies

by Ryu Murakami, Stephen Snyder

The Tale of Genji

by Murasaki Shikibu

Runaway Horses (Vintage International)

by Yukio Mishima

Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel

by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin