(updated late May 2023)
Listed released dates listed are tentative. Descriptions are excerpted from book sellers’ or publishers’ websites. Translators are listed unless I wasn’t able to find information.
Things change quickly in the publishing industry. I’ve made my best attempt to be comprehensive. Please contact me if I have missed any titles.
Thank you to the Goodreads Japanese Literature Group for pooling information.
See a list of all new releases available to order or preorder at RJL’s Bookshop.
See a list of titles released in 2022.
New Releases
• The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai
Translated by Sam Bett
“The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh…”
- Read my review of The Flowers of Buffoonery in Asian Review of Books.
- Learn more about Osamu Dazai and his No Longer Human with the RJL podcast.
• Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki
Translated by Daniel Joseph, Sam Bett, and David Boyd
“Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy…”
- Read my review of Suzuki’s short story collection Terminal Boredom in Asian Review of Books.
- Learn more about Izumi Suzuki with the RJL podcast.
• Honeybees and Distant Thunder by Ondo Riku
Translated by Philip Gabriel
“In a small coastal town just a stone’s throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three students will experience some of the most joyous—and painful—moments of their lives. Though they don’t know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, for ever…”
• Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai
Translated by Polly Barton
(European release expected summer 2023)
“Housewife Natsumi leads a small, unremarkable life in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes on trips to the supermarket, exchanges gossip with neighbours. Tracing the conversations and interactions she has with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying inability to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that make up a life confined to the home, where both everything and nothing happens.”
• Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada
Translated by Hadyn Trowell
(North American and European releases expected spring 2023)
“An ordinary housewife finds herself haunted by visions of a mushroom cloud and abruptly leaves her husband and son to travel alone to the city of Nagasaki, where she soon begins an affair with a young half-Russian, half-Japanese man…”
• The Mill House Murders by Ayatsuji Yukito
Translated by Ho-Ling Wong
“As they do every year, a small group of acquaintances pay a visit to the remote, castle-like Water Mill House, home to the reclusive Fujinuma Kiichi, son of a famous artist, who has lived his life behind a rubber mask ever since a disfiguring car accident.
This year, however, the visit is disrupted by an impossible disappearance, the theft of a painting and a series of baffling murders…”
• The Rope Artist by Fuminori Nakamura
Translated by Sam Bett
“Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body—rapidly becoming two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan’s underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice…”
• The Thorn Puller by Hiromi Ito
Translated by Jeffrey Angles
“The first novel to appear in English by award-winning author Hiromi Ito explores the absurdities, complexities, and challenges experienced by a woman caring for her two families: her husband and daughters in California and her aging parents in Japan…”
Upcoming Releases
• Before We Say Goodbye by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“The latest novel in the international bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series, following four new customers in a little Tokyo café where customers can travel back in time.”
• Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
Translated by Eric Ozawa
(North American and European releases expected summer 2023)
“Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence—until the day her charming boyfriend Kashikoi, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Ojisan…”
• The Devil’s Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
Translated by Jim Rion
(North American and European releases expected summer 2023)
“This classic from the golden age of crime presents a mind-bending Japanese mystery from the great Seishi Yokomizo, whose fictional detective Kosuke Kindaichi is a pop culture phenomenon akin to Sherlock Holmes. This time the beloved scruffy sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates a series of gruesome murders within the feuding family of a brooding, troubled composer, whose most famous work chills the blood of all who hear it…”
• Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami
Translated by Ted Goossen
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“These eight stories are masterpieces of metamorphosis and transformation, infused with Kawakami’s unique brand of humor and beauty. Moles, octopuses, and hippopotamuses interact with humans in a revelatory dance.”
• The End of August by Yu Miri
Translated by Morgan Giles
(North American and European releases expected late summer 2023)
“In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-cheol was a running prodigy and a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. But he would have had to run under the Japanese flag. Nearly a century later, his granddaughter is living in Japan and training to run a marathon herself. She summons Korean shamans to hold an intense, transcendent ritual to connect with Lee Woo-cheol. When his ghost appears, alongside those of his brother Lee Woo-Gun, and their young neighbor, who was forced to become a comfort woman to Japanese soldiers stationed in China during World War II, she must uncover their stories to free their souls…”
• The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino
Translated by Giles Murray
(North American and European releases expected early winter 2023)
• Finger Bone by Hiroki Takahashi
Translated by Takami Nieda
(North American and European releases expected summer 2023)
“1942. At the turning point of the war, the Imperial Japanese Army is in retreat. On Papua New Guinea, the unnamed narrator of Finger Bone is wounded in the fighting and sent to a field hospital to recover…”
• The Forest Brims Over by Ayase Maru
Translated by Hadyn Trowell
(North American and European releases expected summer 2023)
“A woman turns herself into a forest after long being co-opted to serve as the subject of her husband’s novels–this surrealist fable challenges traditional gender attitudes and exploitation in the literary world…”
• Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again by Shigeru Kayama
Translated by Jeffrey Angles
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“Although the Godzilla films have been analyzed in detail by cultural historians, film scholars, and generations of fans, Kayama’s two Godzilla novellas—both classics of Japanese young-adult science fiction—have never been available in English. This book finally provides English-speaking fans and critics the original texts with these first-ever English-language translations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. The novellas reveal valuable insights into Kayama’s vision for the Godzilla story, feature plots that differ from those of the films, and clearly display the author’s strong antinuclear, pro-environmental convictions.”
• The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa
(European release expected fall 2023)
“We meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a holiday island shows a young boy not to stand in nature’s way; a family is perplexed by their cat’s devotion to their charismatic but uncaring father; a woman curses how her cat constantly visits her at night; and an elderly cat, Kota, hatches a plan to pass into the next world as a spirit so that he and his owner may be together for ever..”
• I Guess All We Have Is Freedom by Genpai Akasegawa
Translated by Matthew Fargo
(North American release expected summer 2023)
“In these stories, ostensibly quiet tales of a single dad in 1970s Tokyo, a doorknob practices radical politics, a peeled tomato smarts in pain, raw oysters tick like time bombs and gravestones provide a critique of capitalism…”
• Kappa by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda and Allison Markin Powell
(North American release expected summer 2023)
“Akutagawa’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa. He decides to chase it and, like Alice pursuing the White Rabbit, he tumbles down a hole, out of the human world and into the realm of the Kappas…”
• The Mantis by Kotaro Isaka
Translated by Sam Malissa
(North American and European releases expected late fall 2023)
“Kabuto is a highly skilled assassin eager to escape his dangerous profession and the hold his handler, the sinister Doctor, has over him. The Doctor, a real physician who hands over Kabuto’s targets as ‘prescriptions’ in his regular appointments with him, doesn’t want to lose Kabuto as a profitable asset, but he agrees to let him pay his way out of his employment with a few last jobs. Only the most lucrative jobs involve taking out other professional assassins, and Kabuto’s final assignment puts him and his family—who have no idea about his double life—in danger.”
• Marshland by Otohiko Kaga
Translated by Albert Novick
(European release expected summer 2023; North American release expected fall 2023)
“An epic novel on a Tolstoyan scale, running from the pre-World War II period to the turbulence of 1960s Japan. At forty-nine, Atsuo Yukimori is a humble auto mechanic living an almost penitentially quiet life in Tokyo, where his coworkers know something of his military record but nothing of his postwar past as a petty criminal. Out of curiosity he accompanies his nephew to a demonstration at a nearby university, and is gradually drawn into a friendship, then a romance, with Wakako Ikéhata, the brilliant but mentally unstable daughter of a university professor. As some of the student radical groups turn to violence and terrorism, Atsuo and Wakako find themselves framed for the lethal bombing of a Tokyo train….”
• The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Futaro Yamada
(European release expected winter 2023)
“Japan, 1869. A time of reform and rebellion. Detectives Kazuki and Kawaji are assigned to investigate a series of seemingly impossible murders. Together with the help of a mysterious shrine maiden, can they solve each gruesome death and piece together the dark connection between them? ….”
• Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino
Translated by Kendall Heitzman
(European release expected summer 2023; North American release expected fall 2023)
“A young girl addresses her stepmother, who has moved in shortly after her mother’s death in unusual circumstances. The girl shows strangely detailed knowledge of the older woman’s life, and as her stepmother settles into the house, the girl’s obsession sharpens to an ever finer point…”
• Nipponia Nippon by Kazushige Abe
Translated by Kerim Yasar
(European release expected summer 2023; North American release expected fall 2023)
“Isolated in his Tokyo apartment, 17-year-old Haruo spends all his time online, researching the plight of the endangered Japanese crested ibis, Nipponia Nippon… His conclusion is simple: it is his destiny to free the birds from a society that does not appreciate them, by whatever means necessary. With his emotional state becoming ever more erratic, he begins sourcing weapons and preparing for a reckoning in this darkly ironic study of toxic masculinity…”
• The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama
Translated by Louise Heal Kawai
(European release expected fall 2023)
“Minoru Aose is an architect whose greatest achievement is to have designed the Yoshino house, a prizewinning and much discussed private residence built in the shadow of Mount Asama. Aose has never been able to replicate this triumph and his career seems to have hit a barrier, while his marriage has failed. He is shocked to learn that the Yoshino House is empty apart from a single chair, stood facing the north light of nearby Mount Asama…”
• People Who Talk to Stuffed Animals Are Nice by Ao Omae
Translated by Emily Balistrieri
(North American and European releases expected summer 2023)
“Composed of the title novella and three short stories, People Who Talk to Stuffed Animals Are Nice sensitively explores gender, friendship, romance, love, human interaction and its absence, and how a misogynistic society limits women and men…”
• The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto
Translated by Asa Yoneda
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“Yayoi, a nineteen-year-old woman from a seemingly loving middle-class family, has lately been haunted by the feeling that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. Her premonition grows stronger day by day and, as if led by it, she decides to move in with her mysterious aunt, Yukino.”
- Learn more about Banana Yoshimoto and her Kitchen with the RJL podcast.
- Read my review of The Flowers of Buffoonery in Asian Review of Books.
• The Rainbow by Yasunari Kawabata
Translated by Hadyn Trowell
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age…”
• The Siren’s Lament: Essential Stories by Junichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“These three short stories, in a gorgeous new translation by Bryan Karetnyk, distill the essence of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s shorter fiction: the co-mingling of Japanese and Chinese mythologies, the chillingly dark side of desire and the paper-thin line between the sublime and the depraved…”
• Sunrise: Radiant Stories by Erika Kobayashi
Translated by Brian Bergstrom
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“Sunrise is a collection of interconnected stories continuing Erika Kobayashi’s examination of the effects of nuclear power on generations of women. Connecting changes to everyday life to the development of the atomic bomb, Sunrise shows us how the discovery of radioactive power has shaped our history and continues to shape our future…”
• Tatami Time Machine Blues by Tomihiko Morimi
Translated by Emily Balistrieri
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“In the boiling heat of summer, a broken remote control for an air conditioner threatens life as we know it in this reality-bending, time-slipping sequel to The Tatami Galaxy.“
• This Is Amiko , Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura
Translated by Hitomi Yoshio
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“Other people don’t seem to understand Amiko. Whether eating curry rice with her hands at school or peeking through the sliding doors at her mother’s calligraphy class, her curious, exuberant nature mostly meets with confusion.
When her mother falls into a depression and her brother begins spending all his time with a motorcycle gang, Amiko is left increasingly alone to navigate a world where she doesn’t quite fit…”
• What You Are Looking for Is In the Library by Michiko Aoyama
Translated by Alison Watts
(North American and European releases expected fall 2023)
“‘What are you looking for?’ asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. But Komachi is no ordinary librarian. Naturally, she reads every book on her shelf, but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of anyone who walks through her door. Sensing exactly what they’re looking for in life, she provides just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it…”
I am excited that Michiko Aoyama’s book will be translated! I hope her other books get translated as well, especially 木曜日にはココアを😍
I don’t know much about it yet! Do you?
I have read her books in Japanese, but haven’t seen anything about thenm getting translated before your post☺️
Thank you for sharing this. Love the list 😍
Thnaks for this awesome list!
You’re very welcome. The compilation is a group effort!