The Japanese writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1886–1965) began his career as a writer of sensational, rather diabolical tales influenced in part by Western writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Wilde. Celebrated for his masterful plotting and psychological insight into perverse states of mind, Tanizaki was among the first 20th-century Japanese writers to receive international acclaim as a major literary figure. His last book before his death at the age of 75 is, as the title Diary of a Mad Old Man partially suggests, a first-person account of a man of similar age who suffer ..read more

Confessions of a Mask, a post war autobiographical novel, subverts the conventions of the traditional and dominant Japanese “I” novel of the 20th century. This book, Yukio Mishima’s (1925–70) first commercial success, received praise from the Japanese literary elite and paved the way for the author’s prolific literary career spanning more than 20 years. The novel’s narrator, Kochan, begins by claiming that he witnessed his own birth and proceeds to detail his anomalous existence in a household tainted by illness, familial power struggles, and financial distress. Sequestered in his ill grandmot ..read more

Black Rain is one of the most powerful works of literature in any language dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe. Comparable, at least on the surface, with American author John Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946), Black Rain by Japanese author Masuji Ibuse (1898–1993) deals with the events of August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Whereas Hersey’s work is based upon the experiences of six survivors of the atomic blast, Black Rain is primarily the story of Shizuma Shigematsu and his family. Although based on diaries and testimonies of the bombing victims, the prevail ..read more

Masks by the Japanese writer Fumiko Enchi (1905–86) tells the story of two rivals who pursue a young widow and of the inscrutable relationship between the widow and her mother-in-law, a woman of many secrets who holds her own malevolent plans for the three young people. A meditation on the artificiality of social personae and the fierce power struggles that underlie romantic and sexual relationships, Masks moves toward a chilling, nihilistic conclusion. Despite the novel’s brevity and direct prose, Masks draws on a remarkably rich variety of Japanese cultural and literary intertexts: the Noh t ..read more

Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) is one of the great classics of Japanese literature. A translation of the title produces a wide range of meanings: “heart,” “soul,” “spirit,” “feelings,” and “the heart of things.” Kokoro is divided into three parts: “Sensei and I,” “My Parents and I,” and “Sensei and his Testament.” The first part describes the initial meeting and growing friendship between the young narrator and the sensei, an honorific term meaning master or teacher. The second part traces the relationship between the narrator and his family. The last part is a lengthy letter written to ..read more

Kitchen, the debut novel by Banana Yoshimoto (1964– ), was a phenomenal success, catapulting the young author into instant celebrity status in her native Japan. The novel quickly won three literary prizes: Kaien magazine’s New Writer’s Prize, the Umitsubame first novel prize, and the Izumi Kyoka literary prize, which established her presence as a serious new voice of late 20th-century Japan. The book became extremely popular among young readers, first in Japan, then globally as it was released in more than 20 foreign translations. Kitchen has also been filmed twice, once by Japanese television ..read more

A satire on human foibles from the standpoint of a cat, I Am a Cat is one of the most original novels of the Wagahai wa Neko de aru, one of the best loved works by the Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916). The work chronicles the adventures of an alley cat as he recounts with disarming candor the details of his life story. Saved from starvation by de facto adoption into a middle-class family, the cat proceeds to comment in a learned and quizzical manner on his dealings with humans. Through him we meet various eccentric and engaging personalities. Mr. Sneaze, the head of the household, is ..read more

The third novel by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) returns to themes earlier explored in his semiautobiographical first novel, Confessions of a Mask. The title, a euphemism for homosexuality roughly equivalent to “forbidden love,” frankly announces the novel’s subject matter and setting: the inner workings of Tokyo’s post–World War II gay subculture. When first published, Forbidden Colors was considered shocking and controversial, not only for its portrayal of gay bars and homosexual relationships but also for its depiction of postwar economic and social corruption. The novel’s plot ..read more

The Doctor’s Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi (1931–86) gives a fictional account of the life of Hanaoka Seishū, who lived from 1760 to 1835 and performed the first known operation under anesthesia in 1805, 37 years before the use of ether in the United States and 42 years before the use of chloroform in England. The novel reveals the plight of women in a traditional Japanese household. Since she was eight years old, Kae has admired the beautiful and clever Otsugi. She is thrilled when Otsugi visits her father to ask that Kae marry her son, Seishū, who is attending medical school at the time. After Kae ..read more

Botchan is one of the best-loved novels in Japan and a true comic masterpiece. Written at the beginning of the 20th century by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), the novel tells the story of a gauche middle school teacher. Botchan, or “little master,” is a 23-year-old Tokyoite who takes a teaching job in Shikoku, the smallest of the four main Japanese islands. Botchan quickly gets into a series of difficulties with students and fellow teachers, to whom he unabashedly gives his own private nicknames. In part these difficulties arise from his lack of social skills, which is to say his unwillingness to ..read more