japanese literature

in english

search japanese books translated into english:

Search results for: “book”

  • The pillow book

    A translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a C10 court lady in Heian Japan. Along with the Tale of Genji, it is one of the major Japanese classics.

  • Kangaroo notebook : a novel

    One man’s hell at the hands of the health establishment in Japan. It begins when he discovers radishes sprouting from his shins. Admitted to hospital, he finds himself in the grip of bizarre forces: a self-propelled hospital bed, doctors intent on curing the wrong ailments, infant ghosts and mysterious windstorms.

  • The curious casebook of Inspector Hanshichi : detective stories of old Edo

    Told through the eyes of a street-smart detective, Okamoto Kido’s best-known work inaugurated the historical detective genre in Japan, spawning stage, radio, movie, and television adaptations as well as countless imitations. This selection of fourteen stories, translated into English for the first time, provides a fascinating glimpse of life in feudal Edo (later Tokyo) and…

  • Sayonara, gangsters

    Somewhere in a future time and place, people have no names. Lovers find this inconvenient, so they begin naming each other. The two main characters settle on the following names: the woman is the Nakajima Miyuki Song Book, and the man, who teaches at a poetry school, is Sayonara, Gangsters. Their cat, who prefers milk-and-vodka…

  • Kingyo : the artistry of Japanese goldfish

    This book is a highly unique art book that reveals goldfish both as an element of Japanese culture and as an influential design motif over the last 500 years.

  • Notebook of a ten square rush-mat sized world : a fugitive essay written in the year 1212

  • The Little House

    The Little House is set in the early years of the Showa era (1926-89), when Japan’s situation is becoming increasingly tense but has not yet fully immersed in a wartime footing. On the outskirts of Tokyo, near a station on a private train line, stands a modest European style house with a red, triangular shaped…

  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

    The new novel—a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan—from the internationally acclaimed author, his first since 1Q84. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for…

  • Kiku’s prayer : a novel

    Endo Shusaku was a renowned twentieth-century Japanese author who wrote from the unusual perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared to that of Graham Greene, who himself considered Endo one of the century’s finest writers. A historical novel set in the turbulent period between the fall of the shogunate and…

  • Tun-huang : a novel

    More than a thousand years ago, an extraordinary trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures was secreted away in caves near the Silk Road city of Tun-huang. But who hid this magnificent treasure and why? In Tun-huang, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue tells the story of Chao Hsing-te, a young Chinese man…