Japanese Literature

Voices of the Fallen Heroes: And Other Stories

Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea

Yukio Mishima

A novel from "one of the outstanding writers of the world” (The New York Times) that explores the vicious nature of youth that is sometimes mistaken for innocence. • “A major work of art.” —Time<br/><br/>Thirteen-year-old Noboru is a member of a gang of highly philosophical teenage boys who reject the tenets of the adult world — to them, adult life is illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental. When Noboru’s widowed mother is romanced by Ryuji, a sailor, Noboru is thrilled. He idolizes this rugged man of the sea as a hero. But his admiration soon turns to hatred, as Ryuji forsakes life onboard the ship for marriage, rejecting everything Noboru holds sacred. Upset and appalled, he and his friends respond to this apparent betrayal with a terrible ferocity.

Spring Snow

Yukio Mishima - Sea of Fertility #1

Runaway Horses

Yukio Mishima - Sea of Fertility #2

<b>The second book in Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetraology - this is a story of political violence, traditional samurai values and nihilism.</b><br> <br> Isao is a young, engaging patriot, and a fanatical believer in the ancient samurai ethos. He turns terrorist, organising a violent plot against the new industrialists, who he believes are threatening the integrity of Japan and usurping the Emperor's rightful power. As the conspiracy unfolds and unravels, Mishima brilliantly chronicles the conflicts of a decade that saw the fabric of Japanese life torn apart.<br> <br> <b>'<i>Runaway Horses</i> is disturbing material, also a harbinger of Mishima's own act of 'patriotic' self-slaughter... Strange, elegant, erotic' <i>Guardian</i></b>

The Temple of Dawn

Yukio Mishima - Sea of Fertility #3

The Decay of the Angel

Yukio Mishima - Sea of Fertility #4

Beautiful Star

Yukio Mishima

Death in Midsummer

Yukio Mishima

Life for Sale

Yukio Mishima

'Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.'<br/>When Hanio Yamada realizes the future holds nothing of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits.<br/>A world of revenge, murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisonous carrots, espionage and code-breaking, a junkie heiress, home-made explosives and decoys reveals itself to the unwitting Hanio. Is there anything he can do to stop it?

Frolic of the Beasts

Yukio Mishima

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Yukio Mishima

The Sound of Waves

Yukio Mishima

Forbidden Colours

Yukio Mishima

Thirst for Love

Yukio Mishima

<b>Etsuko is a trapped woman who lays traps for others...</b><br> <br> After the early death of her philandering husband, Etsuko moves into her father-in-law's house, where she numbly submits to the old man's advances. Meanwhile she develops feelings for the handsome eighteen-year-old servant Saburo. Tormented by his indifference, yet invigorated by her desire, she makes one last, catastrophic bid for his attention.<br> <br> <b>'A sensuous, absorbing study of overriding obsession' <i>Kirkus</i><br> <br> 'One of the outstanding writers of the world' <i>New York Times</i></b>

After the Banquet

Yukio Mishima

<b>For years Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness - then she falls in love.</b><br> <br> The man is one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, and she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit. Eventually Kazu must choose between her marriage and the demands of her irrepressible vitality. <i>After the Banquet</i> is a magnificent portrait of political and domestic warfare and love in later life.<br> <br> <b>'An exquisitely paced high comedy at once characterized by humor and restraint...features a magnificently ebullient heroine as she embarks upon one more adventure in love' <i>Kirkus</i><br> <br> ' Mishima's most novelistic work, with a degree of earthiness and warmth rare in his fiction' <i>New York Times</i></b>

Five Modern Noh Plays

Yukio Mishima

The Setting Sun

Osamu Dazai

The Flowers of Buffoonery

Osamu Dazai

For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh. While No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai’s masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.

The Beggar Student

Osamu Dazai

No One Knows

Osamu Dazai

Pandora's Box

Osamu Dazai

The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino

Hiromi Kawakami

The Nanako Thrift Shop

Hiromi Kawakami

Strange Weather in Tokyo

Hiromi Kawakami

People in My Neighborhood

Hiromi Kawakami

Record of a Night Too Brief

Hiromi Kawakami

Under the Eye of the Big Bird

Hiromi Kawakami

<b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE<br><br>From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, this speculative fiction masterpiece envisions an Earth where humans are nearing extinction, and rewrites our understanding of reproduction, ecology, evolution, artificial intelligence, communal life, creation, love, and the future of humanity</b><br><br>In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of "Mothers." Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings--but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.<br><br>Unfolding over fourteen interconnected episodes spanning geological eons, at once technical and pastoral, mournful and utopic, <i>Under the Eye of the Big Bird </i>presents an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it.

Dragon Place

Hiromi Kawakami

Manazuru

Hiromi Kawakami

Child of Fortune

Yūko Tsushima

'A terrific novel' Angela Carter Koko won't do what is expected of her. Defying her family's wishes, she has brought up her eleven-year-old daughter alone in her apartment. And now, after a casual affair, she is unexpectedly pregnant again. What will this mean for her already troubled relationship with her daughter? As she faces the future, memories of her own childhood loss flood into her consciousness, threatening to overwhelm her. Combining the beauty and unease of a dream, this haunting novel is an unflinching portrayal of a woman's innermost fears and desires. 'As relevant today as when it was published ... at once powerfully uplifting and achingly sad' Japan Times

Territory of Light

Yūko Tsushima

Woman Running in the Mountains

Yūko Tsushima

Of Dogs and Walls

Yūko Tsushima

Wildcat Dome

Yūko Tsushima

Weathering With You

Makoto Shinkai

Your Name

Makoto Shinkai

Taki y Mitsuha descubren un día que durante el sueño sus cuerpos se intercambian, y comienzan a comunicarse por medio de notas. A medida que consiguen superar torpemente un reto tras otro, se va creando entre los dos un vínculo que poco a poco se convierte en algo más romántico.

Suzume

Makoto Shinkai

The Garden of Words

Makoto Shinkai

On rainy mornings, Takao can never bring him-self to go to school-instead, he spends that time at the beautiful Shinjuku Gyoen gardens and finds a brief reprieve from everything else in his life among the trees and flowers. And on one of those mornings, he discovers a mysterious woman named Yukino in his haven, skipping work, and an unlikely friendship blooms between them. But though these two are the center of this story, they are far from the only ones trying to find their way in life.<br/><br/><br/>From director Makoto Shinkai comes a deeper look at his award-winning 2013 film, The Garden of Words, full of additional scenes and perspectives to show a whole new side of the many characters who brought the film to life.

Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata

<b>This masterpiece from the Nobel Prize-winning author and acclaimed writer of <i>Thousand Cranes </i>is a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan. • “Kawabata’s novels are among the most affecting and original works of our time.” —<i>The New York Times Book Review</i><br></b><br> At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages—a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

Beauty and Sadness

Yasunari Kawabata

The Rainbow

Yasunari Kawabata

Thousand Cranes

Yasunari Kawabata

Dandelions

Yasunari Kawabata

The Sound of the Mountain

Yasunari Kawabata

Inspector Imanishi Investigates

Seichō Matsumoto

Heaven

Meiko Kawakami

Breasts and Eggs

Meiko Kawakami

All the Lovers of the Night

Meiko Kawakami

Ms Ice Cream Sandwich

Meiko Kawakami

Kitchen

Banana Yoshimoto

Asleep

Banana Yoshimoto

N.P.

Banana Yoshimoto

Amrita

Banana Yoshimoto

Moshi Moshi

Banana Yoshimoto

Dead-End Memories

Banana Yoshimoto

The Premonition

Banana Yoshimoto

Mittens and Pity

Banana Yoshimoto

The Lake

Banana Yoshimoto

Hardboiled and Hard Luck

Banana Yoshimoto

Set My Heart on Fire

Izumi Suzuki

Hit Parade of Tears

Izumi Suzuki

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom<br/><br/>Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy.<br/><br/>A philandering husband receives a bestial punishment from a wife with her own secrets to keep; a music lover finds herself in a timeline both familiar and as wrong as can be; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bovary-like character from one of Suzuki's stories in Terminal Boredom, lands herself in a bizarre romantic pickle.<br/><br/>Wryly anarchic and deeply imaginative, Suzuki was a writer like no other. These eleven stories offer readers the opportunity to delve deeper in this singular writer's work.

Terminal Boredom

Izumi Suzuki

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Yōko Ogawa

<p>Yoko Ogawa's <i>The Housekeeper and the Professor</i> is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.<br><br> He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. <br><br>She is an astute young Housekeeper—with a ten-year-old son—who is hired to care for the Professor. <br>And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities—like the Housekeeper's shoe size—and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.</p>

Revenge

Yōko Ogawa

Mina's Matchbox

Yōko Ogawa

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them. “A story of first enchantments and last gasps…Effervescent." —New York Times Book Review “Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Hotel Iris

Yōko Ogawa

The Diving Pool

Yōko Ogawa

Kokoro

Natsume Sōseki

Botchan

Natsume Sōseki

In its simplest understanding, "Botchan" may be taken as an episode in the life of a son born in Tokyo, hot-blooded, simple-hearted, pure as crystal and sturdy as a towering rock, honest and straight to a fault, intolerant of the least injustice and a volunteer ever ready to champion what he considers right and good. Children may read it as a "story of man who tried to be honest." It is a light, amusing and, at the name time, instructive story, with no tangle of love affairs, no scheme of blood-curdling scenes or nothing startling or sensational in the plot or characters.

Sanshiro

Natsume Sōseki

Kusamakura

Natsume Sōseki

I Am a Cat

Natsume Sōseki

The Gate

Natsume Sōseki

The Three Cornered World

Natsume Sōseki

Confessions of a Mask

Yukio Mishima

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>

Self-Portraits

Osamu Dazai

Schoolgirl

Osamu Dazai

The Third Love

Hiromi Kawakami

The Memory Police

Yōko Ogawa