The winner of three prestigious literary awards, the autobiographical novel Shi no toge (1977; tr. 1985 as The Sting of Death) by Toshio Shimao (1917–1986) portrays the turbulent lives of Shimao and his wife Miho… … Details
This mystery novel revolves around a real-life figure, Ruikō Kuroiwa (1862–1920), a newspaper founder, journalist, and prolific translator and adaptor of numerous English and French novels. The protagonist is Tomohisa Makiba, an 18-year-old with an… … Details
A suspense thriller set in Shanghai during the period of Japanese expansion on the Asian continent in the late 1930s, prior to the commencement of all-out war. Author Hisaki Matsuura vividly captures the dynamism of… … Details
This is a deeply disturbing suspense story of unsolved serial murders and the sinister history behind a disappearing island. In 2006, three people are murdered in what comes to be known as the December 1… … Details
This is the story of a child of two worlds—Japanese and Taiwanese—and the identity crisis she faces as a young woman. Kotoko Amahara’s father is Japanese, her mother Taiwanese. Kotoko is born in Taipei and… … Details
This is the fifth installment in author Natsuhiko Kyōgoku’s series of mystery novels and stories featuring master sleuth Akihiko Chūzenji, a.k.a. Kyōgokudō, who runs an antiquarian bookshop and is also an occultist. Beginning in 1994… … Details
Describing this novel as a suspenseful overnight hostage drama may conjure up images of an action-packed thriller like the Hollywood films Hostage, Die Hard, or The Negotiator, but author Kōtarō Isaka delivers his own unique… … Details
This story of old-fashioned investigative journalism revolves around three reporters, two men and a woman, at a national newspaper. The three were once part of an elite team whose beat was the criminal investigations division… … Details
It is winter and Japan is wrapped in a cold front. More than one meter of snow has accumulated in Karuizawa, a resort town north of Tokyo. The roads are covered and traffic has come… … Details
Steadfast persistence, it turns out, isn’t always the answer to letting go of a bad habit or resisting temptation. In this manga version of the best-selling Habit of Quitting office worker Yui Nakagaki, who has… … Details
On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake struck northeastern Japan, triggering an accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, only 260 kilometers north of Tokyo, that was comparable to the Chernobyl disaster. Thousands of… … Details
All through elementary school, Yūta Kashiwazaki had been the object of ridicule and unable to make friends because of his stuttering. On his first day of middle school, the teacher asks the students to introduce… … Details
Mihiro is in sixth grade and still doesn’t know how to swim. She has a tendency to run away from things she dislikes or finds difficult instead of facing them head-on. The new girl in… … Details
When his only friend Miwa moves away, eighth-grader Kōtarō Mizuno begins spending the noon hour at school by himself on what he calls “the cottage”—the landing of the stairway that leads to the roof. One… … Details
This is a collection of eight short stories written as first-person narratives. There are no police detectives or sleuths, no elaborate tricks. Each story is written as if author Arimasa Ōsawa has momentarily laid down… … Details
This suspense novel follows two characters—an unwitting accomplice in crime and a newspaper reporter—as they pursue an unsolved mystery modeled on a real-life incident that gripped Japan from 1984 into the following year. In that… … Details
While firmly rooted in realism, this story of an elderly man who continues to work the family farm in his isolated mountain hamlet after the death of his wife evokes between its lines the aesthetic… … Details
This manga version of the best-selling title invites a still wider range of readers to master the art of habit as they follow aspiring pâtissier Mai Hanazono through the ups and downs of learning to… … Details
