Free-to-Read Modern Japanese Fiction

• Eisuke Aikawa
  • “Hummingbird”
• Fumiko Enchi
  • “Metamorphosis”
• Taiyo Fujii
  • “Just Like Migratory Birds”
• Kaori Fujino
  • “You Okay for Time?”
• Hideo Furukawa
  • “The Farside”
  • “Fruit”
• Kanji Hanawa
  • “Compos Mentis”
• Maha Harada
  • “An Unnecessary Man”
• Kyoko Hayashi
  • “Masks of Whatchamacallit: A Nagasaki Tale”
• Lafcadio Hearn
  • In Ghostly Japan
  • Kimiko, and Other Japanese Sketches
  • Kotto: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs
  • Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
  • Shadowings
• Nakai Hideo
  • “Underground City”
• Keiichiro Hirano
  • “The Bees That Disappeared”
  • “The Trapped Boy”
• Toshiyuki Horie
  • “Stance Dots”
• Natsuko Imamura
  • The Woman in the Purple Skirt (excerpt)
• Kotaro Isaka
  • “The Bookmobile”
• Sota Ishiki
  • Dream Drops and Star Flowers
• Akiko Itoyama
  • “Waiting in the Offing”
• Keishi Kajifune
  • “The Book Reader”
• Masami Kakinuma
  • “Go for It”
• Mitsuyo Kakuta
  • “The Memory”
• Hiromi Kawakami
  • “Blue Moon”
  • “God Bless You, 2011”
  • Strange Weather in Tokyo (excerpt)
  • The Ten Loves of Nishino (excerpt)
• Mieko Kawakami
  • “Shame”
  • “Where Have All the Sundays Gone?”
• Kou Machida
  • “Dancing for the Avatar”
• Kuzuha Makino
  • “That Girl”
• Masashi Matsuie
  • “Telegraph Pole”
• Aoko Matsuda
  • “Enoki”
  • “The Peony Lanterns” (from Where the Wild Ladies Are)
  • “Smartening Up” (from Where the Wild Ladies Are)
• Shun Medoruma
  • “Glass”
• Kenji Miyazawa
  • “The Restaurant of Many Orders”
• Nako Mori
  • “Dancing Girls”
• Tomohiko Morimi
  • “20th Century Hotel”
  • “Fireworks”
• Haruki Murakami
  • “Airplane”
  • “Another Way to Die”
  • “Barn Burning”
  • “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey”
  • “Cream”
  • “The Elephant Vanishes”
  • “The Folklore of Our Times”
  • “Honey Pie”
  • “Hunting Knife”
  • “Ice Man”
  • “The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day”
  • “The Kingdom That Failed”
  • “Kino”
  • “Man-Eating Cats”
  • “New Year Mining Disaster”
  • “A Poor-Aunt Story”
  • “Samsa in Love”
  • “Scheherazade”
  • “A Shinagawa Monkey”
  • “Sleep”
  • “Tony Takitani”
  • “The Town of Cats”
  • “TV People”
  • “U.F.O. in Kushiro”
  • “Where I’m Likely to Find It”
  • “The Windup Bird and Tuesday’s Women”
  • “The Wind Cave”
  • “With the Beatles”
  • “A Year of Spaghetti”
  • “Yesterday”
  • “The Zoo Attack”
  • *Note that The New Yorker has an article view limit.
• Ryu Murakami
  • “The Last Picture Show”
  • “Whenever I Sit at a Bar Drinking Like This, I Always Think What a Sacred Profession Bartending Is”
• Sayaka Murata
  • “A Clean Marriage”
  • “Faith”
• Kyoko Nakajima
  • “Go, Japanese!”
  • “When My Wife Was a Shiitake”
• Kaho Nakayama
  • Sentimental Education (excerpt)
• Yoshitaka Namboku
  • “Silence Is Gold”
• Ikezawa Natsuki
  • “The Navidad Incident: The Downfall of Matías Guili” (excerpt)
• Kuroda Natsuko
  • “Waymarkers”
• Kanako Nishi
  • “Vio”
• Kento Norikane
  • “The Two of Us, in a Town with a View of the Sea”
• Mori Ogai
  • The Wild Goose
• Kido Okamoto
  • “The Kiso Wayfarer”
• Ao Omae
  • “The Light That Shoots Out of My Sister’s Eyeball”
  • “The Old Woman Skin”
• Masatsugo Ono
  • “Longer Than the Night”
• Hiroko Oyamada
  • The Hole (excerpt)
• Tettyo Seito
  • “Killing by a Car”
  • “Love Him, Wholeheartedly So”
  • “Noe, You’re Selfish”
  • “A Nose Shit”
  • “She Is Alive, He Is Alive”
  • “A Sperm Factory”
  • “The Wholesomeness of Butthole Sunning”
• Tomoka Shibasaki
  • “One Hundred Years and a Day”
• Natsume Soseki
  • Botchan
  • I Am a Cat (volume 1)
• Bin Sugawara
  • “Jars of Amber”
• Izumi Suzuki
  • “The Walker”
• Juan Takai
  • “Planet Ape”
• Fumiki Takahashi
  • “All about Youth”
• Kazumi Takahashi
  • Vessel of Sorrow
• Kumiko Takahashi
  • “Mom’s Celestial Robe of Feathers”
• Yuta Takano
  • “A Sunlit Table”
• Yusho Takiguchi
  • “Nocturne”
• Masatomo Tamaru
  • “Time Arrows”
• Natsumi Tanaka
  • “The Fastener”
• Yoko Tawada
  • “The Far Shore”
  • Memoirs of a Polar Bear (excerpt)
  • “To Zagreb”
• Sayuki Tayama
  • “The Hole in the Garden” (four parts)
  • “Spirit Summoning” (six parts)
• Kikuko Tsumura
  • “A Ghost in Brazil”
  • “The Water Tower and the Turtle”
• Takahiro Ueda
  • “You Lot”
• Miri Yu
  • “North Winds Blow the Winds from the Trees”
  • Tokyo Ueno Station (excerpt)
• Amy Yamada
  • “Magnet”

Anthologies

• Day to Day (April-June 2020)
• Story for You (July-August 2020)

Thank you to Granta, Electric Literature, Note, Project Gutenberg, Samovar, Words without Borders, authors, translators, and all those who make Japanese literature more accessible to English-language readers.