japanese literature

in english

search japanese books translated into english:

Book Subject Tag: Tokyo, Japan, Fiction

  • In the miso soup

    From postmodern Renaissance man Ryu Murakami, master of the psychothriller and director of Tokyo Decadence, comes this hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo’s sex industry. In the Miso Soup tells of Frank, an overweight American tourist who has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife.…

  • Coin locker babies

    The story of two babies abandoned in a locker at a railroad station. They grow up to represent the darker side of Japanese youth, lacking tradition and religion. One brother becomes a male prostitute, then a rock star, the other goes to jail and becomes involved in a plot to poison Tokyo. By the author…

  • After dark

    Two sisters, Eri, a fashion model sleeping her way to oblivion, and Mari, a young student, form the center of a novel that documents a series of encounters, with a jazz trombonist, the manager of a “love hotel” and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute brutalized by a businessman client, in Tokyo during the…

  • Rouse up o young men of the new age!

    Kenzaburo Oe is one of the world’s finest writers, and in Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! he delivers a virtuoso novel of extraordinary power, touching on his familiar themes of family, responsibility, the nature of literary inspiration, and the unique nature of parenting a disabled child.

  • Real world

    In a crowded Tokyo suburb, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer. When one of them, Toshi, discovers that her nextdoor neighbor has been brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor’s son. But when he flees, taking Toshi’s bike and cell phone with him, the four girls…

  • Grotesque

    In the wake of the brutal murders of two Tokyo prostitutes, Yuriko and Kazue, Yuriko’s older sister describes the three women’s education at a prestigious girls’ high school, where a strict societal conventions determine the courses of their lives.

  • Sanshiro

    One of Soseki’s most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving ‘real world’ of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki’s lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro’s doomed…

  • Goodbye, Tsugumi : a novel

    Having grown up by the sea with her invalid cousin Tsugumi, Maria moves to Tokyo and encounters university life and impending adulthood, and spending a last summer with her cousin, she comes to a new understanding about home and family.