Japanese Literature Part I
Explore the best of Japanese literature with our curated list of classic and contemporary books. Discover must-read novels, authors, and timeless stories from Japan's rich literary heritage.
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Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love. Now with a new introduction by the author. Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. Stunning and elegiac, Norwegian Wood first propelled Haruki Murakami into the forefront of the literary scene.
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Out
by Natsuo Kirino
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • Winner of Japan's Grand Prix for Crime Fiction • Edgar Award Finalist • 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 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.
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Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.
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69
by 村上龍
In 1969, they were seventeen. They read Rimbaud, played guitars, smoked pot, fell in love, rebelled against the establishment, protested the war in Vietnam, barricaded high school, and produced the first rock festival in their home town. This title presents the coming of age during a time that left its mark on baby boomers around the world. 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
Book
Beauty and Sadness
by Yasunari Kawabata
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before. "Endlessly provocative and original." —The New York Times Otoko is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.
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The Woman in the Dunes
by Kobo Abe
The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel. After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.
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Book
The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu
The world’s first novel, in a translation that is “likely to be the definitive edition . . . for many years to come” (The Wall Street Journal) A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world’s first novel. 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. Royall Tyler’s superior translation is detailed, poetic, and superbly true to the Japanese original while allowing the modern reader to appreciate it as a contemporary treasure. Supplemented with detailed notes, glossaries, character lists, and chronologies to help the reader navigate the multigenerational narrative, this comprehensive edition presents this ancient tale in the grand style that it deserves.
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The Makioka Sisters
by Junichiro Tanizaki
Four daughters of an old merchant family unknowingly face the end of a gentler way of life in Osaka, Japan in 1938.
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All She was Worth
by Miyuki Miyabe
Tokyo's Inspector Shunsake Honma investigates the case of a woman who may have murdered another in order to take her identity. A tale of credit cards and debt and rampant consumerism in today's Japan.
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ID: 1933368616
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A Personal Matter
by KenzaburĹŤ ĹŚe
First pub. 1964. Author's most dramatic work, won him the prestigious Shincho Literary Prize. In the novel the narrator tells how he responds to the birth and problems posed by his handicapped child. Recipient of the 1994 Nobel prize.
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Kokoro
by Bishop of Hippo Soseki
Haunted by tragic secrets, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt.
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Naoko
by Keigo Higashino
Expertly interweaving the real and the unreal, Naoko involves a working man, Heisuke, whose wife dies in a bus accident. His young daughter survives, but seems to be inhabited by her mother's personality.
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Book
Shipwrecks
by Akira Yoshimura
"A thrilling tale of murder and retribution set on the wild seacoast of medieval Japan"--Cover.
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Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories
by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
A stunning deluxe edition of one of Penguin Classics' most popular translations Ryünosuke Akutagawa is one of Japan's foremost stylists—a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. "Rashömon"and "In a Bamboo Grove" inspired Kurosawa's magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as "The Nose," "O-Gin" and "Loyalty" paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as "Death Register," "The Life of a Stupid Man," and "Spinning Gears," Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Book
The Setting Sun
by 太宰治
Novel of present day Japan. Reaction of an upper-class family to the war and the resultant cultural impact.
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Ashes
by KenzĹŤ Kitakata
A deciding event in a yakuza mobster's career leaves this gangster reflecting upon his life and the events leading up to this moment.
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ID: 4770030258
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The Tattoo Murder Case
by Akimitsu Takagi
Kinue Nomura survived World War II only to be murdered in Tokyo, her severed limbs discovered in a room locked from the inside. Gone is the part of her that bore one of the most beautiful full-body tattoos ever rendered. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor who was first to discover the crime scene, feels compelled to assist his detective brother, who is in charge of the case. But Kenzo has a secret: he was Kinue’s lover, and soon his involvement in the investigation becomes as twisted and complex as the writhing snakes that once adorned Kinue’s torso. The Tattoo Murder Case was originally published in 1948; this is the first English translation.
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ID: 1421513951
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Masks
by Fumiko Enchi
A stunning and understated debut novel of seduction and infidelity about a woman who, devastated by the death of her son, takes an increasing interest in the personal affairs of her widowed daughter-in-law. Following the devastating death of her son, Mieko Toganō takes an increasing interest in the personal affairs of her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko. 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.
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ID: 0571224369
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ID: 4770029748
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ID: 1932234284
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ID: 0231136285
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ID: 1932234357
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ID: 0595390269
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