Contemporary Japanese Literature (in English)

December 16, 2016 6:37 PM

Any recommendations? I'm particularly looking for reasonably priced paperbacks - novels, short stories, anthologies.
posted by andrewcooke to Writing & Language (11 answers total)

Best answer: Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami is pretty lightweight to get into (like 200 pages) and it's great! It's written like an everyday chronicle of these three friends' relationships, but with dream logic and a haunting core. And it's funny and sweet.
posted by benadryl at 6:49 PM on December 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Any genres in particular? I enjoyed Parade by Shuichi Yoshida, All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe, and Winter Sleep by Kenzo Kitakata. All a few years old but with a contemporary feel, each with elements of crime novels but unique takes.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 6:57 PM on December 16, 2016

Best answer: My favorite contemporary Japanese author is Yoko Ogawa, who wrote The Diving Pool and Revenge. She's typically on the border between horror and literary fiction - a kind of grotesque magical realism. I also like Sakuraba Kazuki (she's all over the place genre-wise, but her translated book is a fantasy-inflected family saga) and some of Murakami, in particular Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
posted by Jeanne at 7:57 PM on December 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Book of Tokyo is a recent anthology featuring a lot of authors. Seems like it was pretty well received. (Full disclosure, I guess, one of the stories in it was translated by a friend of mine.)
posted by No-sword at 9:38 PM on December 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: There's the Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories and Monkey Brain Sushi (a short story collection).
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 2:49 AM on December 17, 2016

Response by poster: thanks folks. i guess i was thinking more of Literature with a capital L than genres - who is going to be the next ōe or kawabata or whatever. but if it's interesting and good writing i'll take anything - i'll have a look at all these. more are welcome.
posted by andrewcooke at 3:56 AM on December 17, 2016

Best answer: You should definitely check out Yoko Ogawa. She has also written a couple of novellas which are less horror-inflected than The Diving Pool... But really, I wouldn't consider any of her work genre.
posted by snorkmaiden at 8:04 AM on December 17, 2016

Best answer: I just finished a short story collection by Yoko Tawada titled The Bridegroom was a Dog, for which she won the Akutagawa Prize. If you're looking for new Japanese authors, going through the last two decades of winners in that list and looking into those authors who have Wikipedia pages (and are more likely to have translations of their work) is a good way to find Japanese writers of acclaim who might not yet have much buzz in the West. I've yet to read it, but Risa Wataya's 2003 winner, I Want to Kick You in the Back was published in English last year. As for Tawada, The Bridegroom was a Dog received a reissue from New Directions this year (although I'd suggest the older English edition, as it contains two additional short stories), Memoirs of a Polar Bear, her most recent novel, was just released a month ago, and she's received profiles in The New Yorker and, just a few weeks ago, in The New York Times. If you don't mind shorter works, check out the magazine Monkey Business, whose entire goal is publishing contemporary Japanese literature.
posted by lunch at 12:02 PM on December 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
posted by moons in june at 1:14 PM on December 17, 2016

Best answer: I really liked I Want to Kick You in the Back but I didn't realize it had an English translation - seconded!
posted by Jeanne at 3:11 PM on December 17, 2016

Best answer: Not sure if Kazuo Ishiguro counts - he's a Japanese born Brit - but it's great writing nonetheless: Never Let Me Go is my favorite.
Not quite Literature with an "L", but I'm currently enjoying Natsuo Kirino's Grotesque, and I also just recently finished Keigo Higashino's Naoko - both are wonderful fun.
posted by 7 Minutes of Madness at 2:13 PM on December 18, 2016