Japanese Short Fiction

A war hero on the run. A girl behind barbed wire. A love letter to hope in the darkest times. In 1944 California, Aiko Takeda writes letters to her childhood friend, Takeshi "Taki" Nakamura, a Nisei soldier serving with the famed 442nd Infantry Regiment in Europe. Through their letters, their bond deepens across oceans and gunfire. But when her letters suddenly stop, Taki fears the worst. Learning of the U.S. government's internment of Japanese Americans, Taki makes a life-altering decision: he deserts his unit and sets out on a perilous journey across continents and borders to find Aiko. ...

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, was an Irish writer known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo. His book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, comprises two parts, the first being the "Kwaidan Proper" and the second, "Insect-Studies", which consists of an essay each on ants, butterflies and mosquitos. According to the author, most of the folk tales and ghost stories in the first part were translated from old Japanese texts. The themes encompass resurrection, sacrifice, magic, and the realm of dreams.

The 24 stories that make up Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman generously express the incomparable Haruki Murakami’s mastery of the form. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things for which we might wish. From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit Murakami’s ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and entertaining.

A new selection of 14 of Yukio Mishima's best short stories from the 1960s—his final decade—Voices of the Fallen Heroes offers a unique glimpse into the mind of one of Japan’s greatest writers. In the title story, "Voices of the Fallen Heroes," a séance brings forth the spirits of young officers in the Imperial Army and the kamikaze pilots of World War II, who reproach the Emperor and mourn Japan’s modern decline. In another, Mishima recounts the true story of the time a deranged fan broke into his home at dawn, insisting on meeting the author and imploring him to "tell the truth."

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom: 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; idle high school students find adventure in another dimension but aren't all that impressed; 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.

In these 11 stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien - and through it, find a way to liberation. The Lonesome Bodybuilder is the English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories brings together 15 stories that span Hisaye Yamamoto's 40-year career. It was her first book to be published in the United States. Yamamoto's themes include the cultural conflicts between the first generation, the Issei and their children, the Nisei; coping with prejudice; and the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.

Originally published in 1922 and translated by Takashi Kojima, this classic short story was the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, about the murder of a samurai. Told from the perspective of multiple witnesses.

From the unique standpoint of an American woman who married into a Japanese family and has lived in Japan for more than 30 years, Rebecca Otowa weaves enchanting tales of her adopted home that portray the perspective of both the Japanese and the foreigner on the universal issues that face us all - love, work, marriage, death, and family conflict.

The Dilemmas of Working Women is Fumio Yamamoto’s darkly witty look at modern Japanese women who are ambivalent about their lives and jobs. In “Naked,” a woman who’s simultaneously lost her business and her husband finds that it is surprisingly comfortable to stay at home sewing stuffed animals, even if it makes her a “loser” in the eyes of society. In “Planarian,” a young woman recovering from breast cancer tells her friends and boyfriend that she would prefer to be the titular worm to organically regenerate her body.

Based on Japanese literature and foldlore, Kwaidan contains 17 stories. The story of Loichi, the blind biwa player who was called to perform for the dead; of Muso, the journeying priest who encountered a man eating goblin; of the samurai who outwitted the ghost of a dead man. All these plus 14 other spooly tales are included in this collection.

Mimei Ogawa, a prolific author of short stories nearly 100 years ago, is considered to be one of the founding figures of modern Japanese children’s literature. He has also been called the Hans Christian Andersen of Japan because of how his works were influenced by Andersen. This collection contains a fresh, modern translation of one of Mimei Ogawa’s most famous works, "The Mermaid and the Red Candles", as well as several other stories that have never been translated and published in English before.

Contos de guerreiros japoneses revelará aos seus ouvintes os mais preciosos valores japoneses: disciplina, lealdade, dedicação, perseverança, auto sacrifício, humildade e devoção. Tal arcabouço ético e narrativas envolventes recebem a ilustração de Shusui Okakura e outros artistas, fazendo ecoar da forma mais bela o passado e a memória japonesa.

Discover Japanese classics! This book contains four different short stories to introduce beginners to Japanese literature.

大人も子どもも泣ける！「きょうだい愛」と「家族愛」がつまった児童読み物。AI、ロボットが身近になった今こそ読んでほしい感動ロングセラー

В этот сборник вошли как принесшие Акутагаве мировую славу и автоматически ассоциирующиеся с его именем исторические рассказы и новеллы (включая легендарную "В чаще", послужившую основой для сценария бессмертного фильма "Расёмон" Куросавы), так и менее известные западному читателю, но почитающиеся на родине автора еще выше рассказы, действие которых происходит на фоне современной автору реальности Японии начала ХХ века, еще сохраняющей немало черт национального своеобразия, но жадно и стремительно "европеизирующейся".

'The Two Frogs' is the story of two amphibians who live in different cities in Japan. Each desires to see the world, so each sets out on a journey towards the other's home city. When they meet at the top of a mountain, the two frogs make friends and devise a plan to work out whether their journey is worthwhile - with unintended consequences.

結婚は「始まり」に過ぎない。今も昔も――

A collection of stories from the Land of the Rising Sun. The tales come from a rich folk tradition. Fantasy and horror intermingle in these imaginative narratives.

A dream I wish to have in the night most often isn’t about dating a Hollywood star or making a great hit song. It’s not about my parents saying to me with tears, “We were wrong. We’re sorry”, either. It’s about numbers. I once saw a woman on TV who won four million dollars by the lottery with the numbers she had seen in her dream. Shortly after that, I myself saw numbers in my dream and began to buy a lottery ticket with those numbers.