The ghosts and demons (yokai) of Japanese folklore represent some of the most imaginative, diverse, and strange supernatural creatures anywhere in the world. Vengeful spirits and man-eating demons; haunted furniture and the ghosts of abandoned children populate the best Japanese ghost stories. Japanese ghost stories are a deep well of fantastical, terrifying wonders. They have …
Willow Heath
Where do you start reading an author like Kobo Abe? The post-war Japanese author and playwright has become known, most famously, as Japan’s answer to Franz Kafka. One difference between the two, however, is that Abe was able to finish his works. And of them, which ones are must-read novels? What we have here are …
Translated from the Japanese by Jocelyne Allen Inio Asano is a mangaka best known for being one of the manga world’s smartest and boldest creators. His series Goodnight Punpun is an oft-touted masterpiece that taps into the tragedy of growing up lost and frightened. It’s a series that represents the literary highs which manga can …
Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori In 2018, the English translation of Convenience Store Woman, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, was published by Granta. The book had such an intense and profound effect on me, as a reader, that it remains somewhere in my top 5 novels of all time. I wrote an …
Tokyo is full of quirks. That might, in fact, be the most obvious and understated thing we’ve ever said. Did you know Tokyo holds the world’s biggest and smallest bookstores? Get ready to explore Tokyo’s most interesting bookstores. While it might be a land of salarymen being driven to karoshi — death by overwork — …
Many of us grew up with the Harry Potter franchise — be it the books, the films, or both. In the 90s, Harry Potter hit the world harder than any book series in history, and it’s hard to imagine a series ever making that same splash again. However, some of us (this writer included) no …
The Attack on Titan anime series (also known as Shingeki no Kyojin) was a colossal hit on its initial release. This was the anime series that revitalised the genre in the West and even had people who knew nothing about anime hyped to talk about it. Attack on Titan did for anime what Game of …
Clarissa Goenawan is an Indonesian-born, Singaporean author who has so far penned two novels, both set in Tokyo and both reminiscent of supernatural romance and drama manga, as well as the novels of Haruki Murakami. The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is a subtly fantastical story, driven by themes of love, loss, and grief. It …
Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s original Before the Coffee Gets Cold, an adaptation of his own stage play, was one of the best-selling novels of 2019. A sweet, goofy, novel with heart to spare. We called it “unapologetically awkward and campy, but it is full of soul, presented through clever world …
The anime adaptation of Made in Abyss released in 2017, and featured thirteen episodes of some of the most visually stunning animation ever put out into the world. With an astonishing soundtrack and clever world-building, Made in Abyss stands tall as one of its decade’s best anime. With a world this mysterious and engrossing, it’s …