Japanese Authors

Mieko Kawakami’s Sisters in Yellow captures 1990s Tokyo from the perspective of a young woman trying to eke out a living in nightlife and shady businesses. It’s narrated about twenty years later, around the time of the pandemic, as she looks back on her late teens working at a bar called Yellow and then withdrawing money from cloned bank cards. It seems there were a lot of writers, both Japanese and gaijin, writing during Covid about 90s Japan, and Tokyo in particular. Readi

Kafū Nagai’s short story “ Something Strange Across the River ” (1937) takes us through the streets of early 1900s Asakusa, then the center of Shitamachi (“low city”) culture and entertainment, as well as Yoshiwara and the surrounding districts. The piece is steeped in nostalgia for how things once were during the narrator’s, or Nagai’s, youth (“the old, nostalgic world made manifest as muse to my exhausted heart”). At times, this sense of longing and the imagery it evokes b

Kawabata’s The Dandelion (also published as Dandelions , Tanpopo ) was left unfinished at the time of his death and published posthumously in 1972, and it shows. Reading it, I found myself slipping into an editor’s mindset, which became an exercise in itself. One can’t help but wonder whether Kawabata might have abandoned the work had he lived longer. While some polishing could have reduced the repetition and inconsistency, the novel as a whole doesn’t feel as though it coul

“The Dancing Girl of Izu,” particularly its final three pages, is memorable for its delicate poignancy. What follows is a series of brief vignettes, like postcard-sized watercolors, which Kawabata referred to as palm-of-the-hand stories. Blending fiction and memory, including the early deaths of his parents and sister, followed by those of his grandparents during adolescence, along with misremembering and omission, Kawabata evokes mono no aware through sparse, often elusive

Mishima’s second novel in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy is set in the early 1930s and follows Isao Iinuma, the son of Shigeyuki Iinuma, who had served as a tutor to Kiyoaki Matsugae, the protagonist of Spring Snow (published serially in the mid-1960s). Kiyoaki dies in the first book, and Honda, his childhood friend who plays a central role in both novels, comes to believe that Isao is his reincarnation. Both characters are, in their own ways, difficult to like. Kiyoaki is

Shusaku Endo’s The Samurai (1980) is a fictional account of a 17th-century diplomatic mission from Japan to Nueva España, or present-day Mexico, and then on to Spain and Rome. There’s a lot to this novel as it shifts between first- and third-person narration, and moves from historical adventure to travel narrative, political drama, and a meditation on certain interpretations of faith and Christ. It came as a surprise to me that Endo based the characters on actual historical

Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask ( 仮面の告白, Kamen no Kokuhaku ) was first published in 1949, following the 1948 release of his first novel, Thieves ( 盗賊, Tōzoku ). Written while Mishima was in his twenties, it reads in many respects like a young man’s autobiography. Kochan, the protagonist, examines his passions and violent fantasies as an introvert of fragile constitution. His “mask” conceals from society his true self as a homosexual, while also shielding him from hims

“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.” The famous opening line of Yasunari Kawabata’s short novel Snow Country (1948) captures an experience I know well, having traveled many times through that seemingly endless passage on the way from Tokyo to Naoetsu in Niigata. I remember the first time, twenty years ago, the blinding daylight as the train emerged, and the snow outside the windows piled higher than a person’s height. In the novel, written in 1935 a

This 1986 novel by Shusaku Endo marks something of a departure from much of his earlier work, which leans toward historical fiction. The protagonist, Suguro—a modern-day novelist resembling Endo in several respects—receives a literary award at age 65. As he leaves the ceremony, he’s accosted by a drunken woman who blurts out that the revered Catholic author frequents a brothel in Kabukicho. Convinced that a doppelganger is out there bent on sullying his reputation, Suguro set

Kiku's Prayer first appeared as a newspaper serial in Asahi Shimbun between November 1980 and July 1981. An English translation was published in 2012, and the second novel, Sachiko , was released in English in August 2020. Both are set mainly in Nagasaki: the first in the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the early Meiji era (around 1868), and the latter in the years leading up to the atomic bombing of the city. Often called Japan’s Graham Greene, Shusaku Endo was a

Four disparate short stories by one of Japan’s greatest writers make up this collection. Written between 1917 and 1926, they’re told with a blend of realism and fabulism, and in all four Junichiro Tanizaki explores, from different angles, the pursuits and pitfalls of pleasure. The first story, “The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga,” is in some ways reminiscent of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , and is well crafted. Next is “A Night in Qinhuai,” which reads almost like a

Shusaku Endo’s 1993 novel Deep River (深い河, or Fukai Kawa) follows a group of Japanese tourists on a tour of Buddhist sites in India. Each is searching for some form of spiritual understanding or healing. Isobe lost his wife years earlier and ruminates on reincarnation. Mitsuko, my favorite character for her type and for how well Endo develops her, is a cynical nurse who believes she’s incapable of love and mocks the priest Otsu for his devotion to Christianity and its “Onion

A dragon king, a tongue-clipped sparrow, a sake-drinking tortoise, a vengeful rabbit, a pitiful hare, a flying paper crane, and luminous beings from the moon… A dreadful goblin hag, Rin Jin the Sea King, the Dragon Queen, the Peach Boy, the ogre of Rashomon, and so on. There’s oodles of imagination in this collection of twenty-two fairy tales translated into English by Yei Theodora Ozaki. They aren’t haunting or creepily bizarre like Lafcadio Hearn’s retellings of old Japanes

The Sound of Waves (1954) by Yukio Mishima is a fairly slim novel that surprised me. After reading Death in Midsummer and Other Stories (1953) and the short story “Patriotism” (1960), both dark and philosophical, this one, by comparison, felt refreshingly light and optimistic. I didn’t know he had it in him. And while the subject of suicide does come up, as an option in the mind of the young protagonist, [spoiler…] nobody actually kills themselves or dies in otherwise tragi

The Memory Police , a novel by Yoko Ogawa, was published in 1994 and later translated by Stephen Snyder for its 2019 release in English. This dreamlike, dystopian story unfolds in an enigmatic cloud of allegory. It’s set on an isolated island plagued by the gradual disappearance of memories, along with the objects that evoke them. Roses are among the first to go, then birds and calendars, and the island’s inhabitants themselves seem to fade in ways as well. A few retain their

Junichiro Tanizaki (July 24, 1886–July 30, 1965) was a master at burrowing into the heart of human relationships and describing them with precision and clarity. English translations by Anthony H. Chambers of his short story “The Reed Cutter” (蘆刈, or “Ashikari” in Japanese) and Captain Shigemoto's Mother (少将滋幹の母, or Shōshō Shigemoto no haha), originally published in 1932 and 1949 respectively, appear in this 1993 collection. The narrators in both works quote from a number of

When We Were Orphans (2000), Kazuo Ishiguro’s fifth novel, has been called the author’s weakest work, and I’ve heard that he himself has admitted as much to some degree, perhaps in an interview. That said, he’s such an accomplished storyteller that his “worst” novel might be more fairly described as his “least best.” I do agree, though, that this isn’t as strong as his others. It feels too long in places and could have benefited from some trimming. At times I really enjoyed

Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki is a novel about deceit, jealousy and betrayal. Written between 1928 and 1930 as a serial for a magazine, the story is narrated by a young Osaka woman named Sonoko, who becomes infatuated and then in love with another woman, the childish but cunning Mitsuko. Sonoko is married, while Mitsuko is secretly involved with an impotent playboy who proves even more deceitful, at least according to Sonoko. Sonoko recounts the entire story of these two w

Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories (2009) is a collection of works by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927). I’d seen Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon a couple of times but had never read the story on which it’s based. It turns out the film is more a retelling of Akutagawa’s 1922 short story “In a Grove,” which is the second of the seventeen stories in this book. “Rashomon,” the story, is the first in the collection and is grouped under the editor’s heading “A World in Decay

Star (1960), translated into English for a release in 2019, is a novella by Yukio Mishima written in the first person and centered on celebrity, and the exclusivity, pressures and pleasures of stardom. A young man reflects on his experience acting in a yakuza film, his rising fame, and his life off set. Mishima wrote it soon after, or during, the filming of Afraid to Die (1960), in which he starred. The novella was originally published in a Japanese magazine. The novella ta