Short story books set in Japan (20)
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1.
Men Without Women : Stories by Haruki Murakami EN
JapanDescription:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Including the story "Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award–nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author "examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers" (Barack Obama). Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to ... continue
2.
The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki EN
Description:
A major new collection of Japanese short stories, many appearing in English for the first time, with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, author of Killing Commendatore A Penguin Classics Hardcover This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the art of the Japanese short story, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable practitioners writing today. Edited by acclaimed translator Jay Rubin, who has himself freshly translated some of the stories, and with an introduction by Haruki Murakami, this book is a revelation. Stories by writers already well known to Engl... continue
3.
Revenge : Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa EN
Description:
Offers eleven interwoven macabre short stories that take an ominous look at grotesque characters, violent emotions, and murder.
4.
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edogawa Rampo, James B. Harris EN
Description:
For contents, see Author Catalog.
5.
The Ginza Ghost by Keikichi Ōsaka EN
Description:
The Japanese form of Golden Age detective fiction was re-launched in the early 1980s as shin honkaku by Soji Shimada and Yukito Ayatsuji, but the original honkaku dates from the 1930s and one of its pioneers was Keikichi Osaka. The Ginza Ghost is a collection of twelve of his best stories, almost all impossible crimes. Although the solutions are strictly fair-play, there is an unreal, almost hallucinatory quality to them. Osaka, who died tragically young, was an early pioneer and master of the genre, whose work is only now starting to be re-discovered. Readers of LRI's The Decagon house Murder... continue
6.
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa EN
Description:
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan's foremost stylists - a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove" inspired Kurosawa's magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as "The Nose", "O-Gin" and "Loyalty" paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as "Death Register", "The Life of a Stupid Man" and "Spinning Gears", Akutagawa drew from his own... continue
7.
Life Ceremony : Stories by Sayaka Murata EN
Description:
The long-awaited first short story-collection by the author of the cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, tales of weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the unsettling nature of human existence With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness. In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portra... continue
8.
People from My Neighborhood : Stories by Hiromi Kawakami EN
Description:
Nominated for the 2021 Shirley Jackson Award From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo, a collection of interlinking stories that masterfully blend the mundane and the mythical—"fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: naïf, magical, and frequently veering into the macabre" (Financial Times). A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll's brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever hear... continue
9.
The Diving Pool: Three Novellas by Yoko Ogawa EN
Description:
A trio of novellas explores the mysteries of love, motherhood, fertility, obsession, innocence, and cruelty, in the stories of a lonely teenage girl who falls in love with her foster brother, a young woman who records her pregnant sister's daily moods ina
10.
Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda EN
Description:
In this "delightfully uncanny" collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales (The New York Times Book Review), humans live side by side with spirits who provide a variety of useful services—from truth-telling to babysitting, from protecting castles to fighting crime. A busybody aunt who disapproves of hair removal; a pair of door-to-door saleswomen hawking portable lanterns; a cheerful lover who visits every night to take a luxurious bath; a silent house-caller who babysits and cleans while a single mother is out working. Where the Wild Ladies Are is populated by these an... continue
11.
Fox Tales by Tomihiko Morimi EN
Description:
A collection of four spooky tales for the modern era, all tied to a certain Kyoto curio shop. A basket wriggles, a masked man lingers in the dark, and things are offered, lost, and forgotten. What mysteries lie hidden in the city's winding streets? Tomihiko Morimi offers a stylish glimpse into the beguiling and mysterious darkness of the old capital.
12.
The Gourmet Club : A Sextet by Junichiro Tanizaki EN
Description:
This dazzling collection of six decadent tales spans 45 years in the extraordinary career of Japan's modern master storyteller.
13.
A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Junichiro Tanizaki EN
Description:
This collection of stories is distinguished by its lightheartedness and comicealism.
14.
Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki EN
Description:
Junichiro Tanizaki’s Seven Japanese Tales collects stories that explore the boundary at which love becomes self-annihilation, where the contemplation of beauty gives way to fetishism, and where tradition becomes an instrument of voluptuous cruelty. A beautiful blind musician exacts the ultimate sacrifice from the man who is both her disciple and her lover. A tattooist turns the body of an exquisite young girl into a reflection of her predatory inner nature. A young man is erotically imprisoned by memories of his absent mother. Shocking in its content and lyrical in its beauty, these stories re... continue
15.
Record of a Night too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami EN
Description:
Akutagawa Prize-winning stories about unsettling loss and romance from one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary writers—for fans of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto In a dreamlike adventure, one woman travels through an apparently unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, mist-monsters and villainous monkeys; a sister mourns her invisible brother whom only she can still see, while the rest of her family welcome his would-be wife into their home; and an accident with a snake leads a shop girl to discover the snake-families everyone else seems to be concealing. Sensual, yearning, and fi... continue
16.
Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami EN
Description:
Hiromi Kawakamiis well known for her many novels and microfiction in translation, and Dragon Palace is her first story collection to be published in English. These eight stories are masterpieces of metamorphosis and transformation, infused with Kawakami's unique brand of humor and beauty. Moles, octopuses, and hippopotamuses interact with humans in a revelatory dance.
17.
The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata EN
Description:
From Japan's first Nobel laureate for literature, three superb stories explore the interplay between erotic fantasy and reality in a loner's mind. Kawabata's fiction is noted for combining a traditional Japanese aesthetic with modernist, often surreal trends: his richly lyrical prose is imbued with a sense of loneliness and alienation. In these three tales, underlying the erotic fantasy is the protagonists' lack of connection with other people, and their memories of past loves in an empty sterile life. The title story, "House of the Sleeping Beauties," is about a man who visits a brothel where... continue
18.
Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki EN
Description:
A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy. 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; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bova... continue
19.
The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa EN
Description:
In the much-anticipated follow-up to the bestselling and beloved The Travelling Cat Chronicles, seven cats weave their way through their owners’ lives, climbing, comforting, nestling, and sometimes just tripping everyone up in this uplifting collection of tales by international bestselling author Hiro Arikawa. Against the backdrop of changing seasons in Japan, we meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose playful nature and simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a popular holiday island show a young boy not to stand in nat... continue
20.
La mort en été by Yukio Mishima FR
Description:
Dix nouvelles sont ici rassemblées. Elles reflètent tout à la fois la diversité des talents de Mishima - art du détail comme du développement thématique, art de la description comme de l'ellipse - et de la diversité des univers qu'il pénètre. Les hommes d'affaires et leurs épouses, les geishas, les gens du peuple, les acteurs du kabuki, le vieux prêtre du temple de Shiga et les soldats finissent par composer un Japon moderne en butte à ses traditions séculaires. Et tout est là : l'amour vénal, l'amour sublime et sacrilège ; la perversion des femmes et du monde de l'argent ; les superstitions e... continue