Japanese literature

Book Reviews

• Ryunosuke Akutagawa: Mandarins
  - fifteen from "the father of the Japanese short story"
• Hiro Arikawa: The Travelling Cat Chronicles
  - a road-trip around Japan with a cat
• Shusaku Endo: The Samurai*
  - a novel of Christian faith in 17th century Japan
• Enchi Fumiko: A Tale of False Fortunes
  - love and politics in 10th century Japan
• Robin D. Gill: Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!*
  - 900 sea cucumber haiku, with translations and commentary
• Yasunari Kawabata: The Master of Go
  - individual and social tensions in a single game
• Yasunari Kawabata: The Old Capital
  - a young woman in post-war Kyoto; a novel
• Okamoto Kido: The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi
  - detective stories set in Edo Japan
• William R. LaFleur: The Karma of Words*
  Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan
• Seicho Matsumoto: Inspector Imanishi Investigates
  - a murder mystery in 1960 Japan
• Yukio Mishima: The Sound of Waves
  - a simple love story set on a small Japanese island
• Michael Molasky, Steve Rabson: Southern Exposure
  Modern Japanese Literature From Okinawa
• Haruki Murakami: South of the Border, West of the Sun
  - teenage romance and angst; a midlife crisis
• Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
  - a Japanese mix of fantasy and historical fiction
• Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji
  - an abridgement of the 11th century Japanese classic
• Ihara Saikaku: The Life of an Amorous Woman*
  - stories of Japan's 17th century Floating World
• Samuel Hideo Yamashita: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies*
  Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese
• Akira Yoshimura: Shipwrecks
  - a story of a poor coastal village in medieval Japan
• Yu Miri: Tokyo Ueno Station*
  - down and out in Tokyo and Fukushima

See also: Chinese literature | Japan | Korean literature | world literature

See the Japan category for books about, or set in, Japan.