Asian literature / Japanese literature

The Decay of the Angel

The Sea of Fertility #4

by Yukio Mishima & Edward G. Seidensticker

The dramatic climax of the SEA OF FERTILITY, bringing together the dominant themes of the three previous novels; the decay of Japan's courtly tradition and samurai ideal, and the essence and value of Buddhist...

The Temple of Dawn

The Sea of Fertility #3

by Yukio Mishima

Dramatizes the Japanese experience from the eve of World War II through the degradation of the postwar era.

Spring Snow

The Sea of Fertility #1

by Yukio Mishima

The first novel of Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of fertility

Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders...

Runaway Horses

The Sea of Fertility #2

by Yukio Mishima

The chronicle of a conspiracy and a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war--an era marked by depression, social change and political violence.

Another, Vol. 1 (novel)

by Yukito Ayatsuji

In the spring of 1998, Kouichi Sakakibara transfers to Yomiyama North Middle School. In class, he develops a sense of unease as he notices that the people around him act like they're walking on eggshells, and...

A Thousand Cranes

by Yasunari Kawabata

With a restraint that barely conceals the ferocity of his characters' passions, one of Japan's great postwar novelists tells the luminous story of Kikuji and the tea party he attends with Mrs. Ota, the rival...

A Thousand Cranes

by Yasunari Kawabata

Thousand Cranes, by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead.

While attending a traditional tea ceremony...

Snow Country

by Yasunari Kawabata & Edward G. Seidensticker

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer’s masterpiece: a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.

At an isolated mountain...

The Master of Go

by Yasunari Kawabata

Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other’s black or white stones. Simple in its fundamentals, infinitely complex in its execution, Go is an essential expression of the Japanese...

Paprika: A Novel

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

Widely acknowledged as Yasutaka Tsutsui's masterpiece, Paprika unites his surreal, quirky imagination with a mind-bending narrative about a psychiatric institute that has developed the technology to invade people's...

Revenge

by Yoko Ogawa & Stephen Snyder

“It's not just Murakami but also the shadow of Borges that hovers over this mesmerizing book… [and] one may detect a slight bow to the American macabre of E.A. Poe. Ogawa stands on the shoulders of giants,...

Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

by Shusaku Endo & Van C. Gessel

Endo Shusaku was a renowned twentieth-century Japanese author who wrote from the unusual perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared to that of Graham Greene, who himself considered...

The Tale of the Heike

by Royall Tyler

A masterpiece of world literature; the samurai saga of pride, romance, and warfare of medieval Japan

With a reflection on the fleeting nature of power and glory begins The Tale of the Heike, an epic from twelfth-century...

Salvation of a Saint

by Keigo Higashino & Alexander O. Smith

From the author of the internationally bestselling, award-winning The Devotion of Suspect X comes the latest novel featuring “Detective Galileo”

In 2011, The Devotion of Suspect X was a hit with critics...

The Briefcase

by Hiromi Kawakami & Allison Powell

Tsukiko, thirty-eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, “Sensei” in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him “Sensei” (“Teacher”)....

The Woman in the Dunes

by Kobo Abe

The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.

After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an...

The Face of Another

by Kobo Abe

Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator...

The Ruined Map: A Novel

by Kobo Abe

Of all the great Japanese novelists, Kobe Abe was indubitably the most versatile. With The Ruined Map, he crafted a mesmerizing literary crime novel that combines the narrative suspense of Chandler with the...

The Box Man: A Novel

by Kobo Abe

Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes, combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett.

In this eerie...

1Q84

by Haruki Murakami

“Murakami is like a magician who explains what he’s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers . . . But while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it's...