H ere at Five Books , we are always very interested in reading books about Japan —and site data shows that our readers are too. We decided to put together a list of the books by Japanese authors that have on the site, recommended by our expert interviewees. It includes classic texts from Japanese literature, like The Tale of Genji The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Norwegian Wood— and, more recently, writers like Sayaka Murata and Mieko Kawakami.
Fiction
“If you’ve never read any of Murata’s work, I’d suggest you start with her breakout hit Convenience Store Woman, which incorporates many of her preoccupations: asexuality, nonconformity, relationships of convenience. It’s about a female shop worker who takes refuge in the scripted and impersonal nature of her job, and faces increasing pressure from her friends and family to marry and build a more high-flying career.” Read more...
Very Short Books You Can Read In A Day
Cal Flyn ,
Five Books Editor
“There are loan sharks, there’s credit card debt and bankruptcy, there’s identity theft. It’s a mystery story about capitalism and the bubble economy. It’s easy to think that if you get into debt, it’s your own fault, it’s a personal matter. This book makes us deliberate a moment and scrutinizes this matter from different perspective. It’s saying, ‘It’s not the fault of individuals, it’s the market.'” Read more...
Best Classic Japanese Mysteries
On Nomoto ,
“He’s the best-known Japanese writer right now and this book I would consider to be his opus. It’s a big sprawling book that deals with weighty subjects like the Second World War and Japan’s part in that. There is a horrifying section set when the Japanese had occupied Manchuria and the Chinese are approaching and it’s told from the point of view of a soldier who is told to kill all the animals in the zoo as the Chinese close in. It’s a harrowing tale of this Japanese soldier going round the cages killing these magnificent animals.” Read more...
The best books on The Asian American Experience
Sung J. Woo ,
Novelist
“It’s about a teenage boy whose girlfriend mysteriously disappears. He never gets over it, and finally finds her working in a dream library in a shadowy parallel world. But she doesn’t remember him at all. Expect magical realism, dream logic, and plenty of Easter Egg surprises for longtime Murakami fans.” Read more...
Notable Novels of Fall 2024
Cal Flyn ,
Five Books Editor
“Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a manga comic written in the eighties by Hayao Miyazaki, who would go on to become an acclaimed director. It would inspire his early feature-length film of the same name, which would go on to lay the groundwork not just for Studio Ghibli, not just for Japanese animation, but, I would argue, for animation in general, and for so much of what we’ve been able to see that medium accomplish over time.” Read more...
The Best Graphic Novels That Were Made into Movies
Walt Hickey ,
Journalist
“It is one of the best-known works of fiction by one of Japan’s best-known authors. I have a soft spot for Kokoro, probably because it was the first novel I read entirely in Japanese. Natsume Sōseki was a wonderful writer and his prose is incredibly beautiful. I find the novel fascinating because it is about a nation on the verge of dramatic change. Sōseki’s life (1867–1916) overlapped almost entirely with the Meiji period (1868–1912), and the novel articulates the sensibilities of the late Meiji era and the tensions of a modernising nation.” Read more...
The Best Modern Japanese Literature
Linda Flores ,
Literary Scholar
The Inugami Curse is a detective novel by Seishi Yokomizo (1902-1981), one of the pioneers of the Japanese crime novel. The main character is the dishevelled private investigator Kosuke Kindaichi, who went on to feature in a total of 77 novels. The book has been adapted for television and film numerous times.
Our Five Books interview with Seishi Yokomizo's grandson, On Nomoto, on the Best Japanese Crime Novels .
Read expert recommendations
“Heaven is a very short, deeply claustrophobic novel of two children in what Americans would call middle school—what we’d call early secondary school—who, for different reasons, are bullied by their peers. Eventually they get to know each other. The girl sends the boy a note and they meet up where nobody can see them and they talk about how they can or should deal with what they are experiencing. These 230 pages act as a a tiny capsule, taking you back to the time you felt at your most vulnerable, and felt that no one was going to come and save you.” Read more...
The Best of World Literature: The 2022 International Booker Prize Shortlist
Frank Wynne ,
Translator
“Masks is a powerful and profound work of literature. Published in 1958, it demonstrates the ways in which women continued to struggle under the patriarchal system despite legal changes to women’s rights with the post-war Japanese constitution. Whilst the post-war constitution granted women certain rights, they remained subject to many of the same social practices and norms that had been in place under the ie , the traditional family system.” Read more...
The Best Modern Japanese Literature
Linda Flores ,
Literary Scholar
Nonfiction
“This small book is a powerful memoir – a devastating account of the survival of a small child in the middle of one of the most violent and relentless battles of the twentieth century, which has to be read to be believed. In fact, it should be read and re-read by all of us, as a reminder that children continue to be the very worst victims of war.” Read more...
Forgotten 20th-Century Classic Books
Rebeka Russell ,
Publisher
“The book was very much written to appeal to people who don’t have a background in Japanese history or Japanese political thought. It’s really wonderful. It tackles the early modern period, all the way across the Meiji transformation into the early twentieth century. There’s something about this book that really gets at a lot of unspoken assumptions, that tries to think about the common sense of this particular era in a way that transports you into the past.” Read more...
The best books on Japanese History
Adam P. Bronson ,
Historian
“She argues that depression has become not only an individual matter but rather a social and national matter. Importantly, this change overlaps with the Japanese economic downturn starting in the mid-1990s. So it occurs when the Japan boom years ended, when lots of people lost their jobs or lost their lifetime employment, so they had to work harder without any extra pay. That kind of environment created ‘deaths from overwork’.” Read more...
The best books on Japan
Chigusa Yamaura ,
Anthropologist
“She’s looking at the Tokugawa period from the 17th through the 19th centuries and asking, how does the warrior regime function? What does it mean to be a warrior? And how do we go from having warriors who were very violent in warfare during the Warring States period of the 16th century into the not-so-violent types of this later period? How do we tame them, essentially?” Read more...
The best books on Samurai
Michael Wert ,
Historian
“It’s a very interesting read and gives some real insight into relations between Japan and the US in the past. Miyoshi occupies a position that critically scrutinizes the different assumptions on both sides—certain racist ideas on the part of the Americans, but also certain obsessions on the part of the Japanese delegates as well.” Read more...
The best books on Japanese History
Adam P. Bronson ,
Historian
Classic books
“The Tale of Genji was completed in the early 11th century and is one of the oldest — perhaps the oldest — novel in the world… The book follows the life of Genji, a prince, and is a wonderful long read — a psychological novel that not only describes life at court in Heian Japan (794-1185) but also explores universal themes including love and power.” Read more...
Five East Asian Classic Books Worth Reading
Tuva Kahrs ,
Five Books Editor
“This is a book that was very, very famous in Japanese for a long time. Everyone and their brother cited it as an example of warriors observing society around them, the changes that were happening, and bemoaning those changes. But for the longest time, if you didn’t read Japanese, you couldn’t use it. Now, finally, a group of scholars has translated it and it came out a few years ago. Again, it’s a book that I assign to students because it’s easily readable and really gives us a sense of what’s going on in Edo society, the frustrations that warriors are feeling that things are changing and not in their favour.” Read more...
The best books on Samurai
Michael Wert ,
Historian
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