Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot Published by Picador Tales from the Cafe 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 …

The anime adaptation of The Promised Neverland manga released its first season in 2019 to critical praise. The show finally offered answers to anime fans wondering why manga readers were so obsessed with the series. But, for fans won over by the anime, is The Promised Neverland manga worth reading? Yes. Here’s why. What is …

The publishing world, wherever in the world you are, is still dominated by men: male writers, editors, and publishers. This is despite the fact that the majority of readers around the world are women, and that so much of the best writing has always come from women authors. Today, the best Japanese novels are all …

Mieko Kawakami is already a superstar author in her native Japan. A philosophical and feminist powerhouse of beautiful prose, interwoven with discussions on death, birth, womanhood, growth, and change. She is now a rising star in the English language, too, thanks to translations of works like Ms. Ice Sandwich from Pushkin Press (tr. Louise Heal …

Hiromi Kawakami has made a name for herself as a writer with a defined sense of time and place, and how these forces change us. In Strange Weather in Tokyo, her lovers represent two periods of Japan’s history and how they must court one another in the present. In The Ten Loves of Nishino, ten …

In the afterword of The Beast Warrior, Nahoko Uehashi writes that the book’s prequel, The Beast Player, “was like a beautiful closed circle”, that it didn’t require a sequel. After reading both books, one immediately after the other, it’s impossible to agree with that statement. The Beast Warrior not only feels like a true successor …

Soji Shimada is a legend of genre fiction in Japan, standing at the top of an impressive mountain of great whodunnit writers. But here, the author of Murder in the Crooked House and The Tokyo Zodiac Murders has turned his ambitions to science fiction, while still maintaining that knack for suspense, tension, and mystery. One …

Best known as one of Studio Ghibli’s most beloved movies, directed by Hayao Miyazaki back in 2003, Kiki’s Delivery Service, much like Howl’s Moving Castle, began its life as a children’s novel. But while the novel of Howl’s Moving Castle was written by a beloved Welsh author, Kiki began her life in Japan, created and …

The full title of Matt Alt’s book is Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World. And this ambitious title is right on the money in ways that will surprise and delight you, no matter how prepared you feel going in, or how much you already think you know about Pokemon, Gundam, or Hello …

As many of the books on this list explore and celebrate, Tokyo is a city that contains multitudes. It is an Edo city of traditional Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. It’s also a pre-war town of narrow yokocho alleyways lined with ramen joints and izakayas. And it’s a modern metropolis of kawaii cafes, shopping districts, …