The Best 20th Century Japanese Novels

How did you decide to recommend these five Japanese novels? What were you hoping to highlight?

When Kenzaburō Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, he delivered a speech titled “Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself.” Three decades have passed since that moment, and yet, for me, Japan — and the Japanese people — remain profoundly ambiguous.

This selection of books has been curated with the hope that readers in the English-speaking world might experience, simultaneously, both the beauty and the strangeness that define Japan.

Let’s start with Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s A Portrait of Shunkin. It’s a novella set in 19th-century Osaka, published in 1933. It first came out in English in the collection Seven Japanese Tales. Why do you recommend it?

Among other tales of deviant love, this stands out for its particularly Japanese sensibility. It tells the story of Shunkin, a blind woman, and Sasuke, her obsessively devoted servant. The novel depicts their strange and singular bond — one which only they can understand — through a nuanced exploration of the gaps between the seen and the unseen. It reveals, in an almost tactile way, a world that transcends the visual — the sort of world that can only be rendered through the medium of the novel.

Thank you. Your second book recommendation is No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. It was published in 1948, only a month after Dazai’s suicide, and is now considered a modern classic. Can you introduce it?

I’ve chosen five novels here, but if I was only allowed to name one, it would be No Longer Human. It’s captivating in its own right, of course, but what makes Dazai’s work so unique is the way it inspires readers to think, “Maybe I could write something too.” Many well-known writers have cited this novel as a key influence. Without it, the landscape of contemporary Japanese literature would surely look very different.

Your next pick is The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, published in 1956. It’s by the controversial writer Yukio Mishima, and is based on a real-life case of arson. Can you tell me a bit more about this novel?

It is a masterpiece in which Mishima fuses an uncompromising aestheticism with a raw and intense energy that seems willing to stake everything, even life itself. It changed the course of my life when I read it at fourteen, and even now, all these years later, it still looms before me like the real Golden Pavilion, showing no signs of crumbling.

Your next recommendation is The Box Man by Abe Kōbō, published in 1973. What do you want to highlight about this novel?

I recently reread this after the editor of the Italian edition of Sympathy Tower Tokyo told me that my work was reminiscent of Kōbō’s. The unhinged premise, the abrupt narrative shifts, the intensely cerebral prose — all these elements are held in such a delicate balance that, when I read it as a student, it brought me a strange sort of comfort. It was the comfort of knowing that, in the realm of fiction least, even our most deranged thoughts are permitted.

We have come to your final book pick, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the internationally bestselling novelist Haruki Murakami, published in 1994. Why do you recommend it?

Reading a Murakami novel can feel like setting out on a lonely journey through the deepest recesses of the human heart. It’s a disquieting experience, like wandering through a forest with no end in sight, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the deepest and densest of all those forests. The central themes of war and violence might seem far removed from my peaceful daily life, but the novel reminds me that the darker sides of humanity are really contiguous with my own existence.