Free-to-Read Modern Japanese Fiction

• Eisuke Aikawa

• “Hummingbird”

• Fumiko Enchi

• “Metamorphosis”

• Kaori Ekuni

• “Girl Friends”
• “Night, Wife, Detergent”

• 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”

• Moe Haruno

• “The One I Want to Meet”

• 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”

[update in progress]

• 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”
• “I Won’t Let You Go”
• Strange Weather in Tokyo (excerpt)
• The Ten Loves of Nishino (excerpt)

Learn more about Hiromi Kawakami with the RJL podcast.

• Mieko Kawakami

• “About Her and the Memories That Belong to Her”
• Breasts and Eggs (excerpt in Manchester dialect)
• “The Flowers Look More Beautiful Now Than Ever”
• “Golden Slumbers” (article limit)
• “How Much Heart”
• “Shame”
• “Where Have All the Sundays Gone?”
• “Wisteria”

Learn more about Mieko Kawakami with the RJL podcast.

• Sachiko Kishimoto

• “Pension Life”

• Kou Machida

• “Dancing for the Avatar”

• Kuzuha Makino

• “That Girl”

• Aoko Matsuda

• “Enoki”
• “The Peony Lanterns”
• “Smartening Up”

• Masashi Matsuie

• “Telegraph Pole”

• Shun Medoruma

• “Glass”
• “Hope”
• Rainbow Bird (excerpt)
• “Stories from the Streets of Koza”

• Yu Miri

• “North Winds Blow the Winds from the Trees”
• Tokyo Ueno Station (excerpt)

• Kenji Miyazawa
  • “The Restaurant of Many Orders”
• Nako Mori
  • “Dancing Girls”
• Tomihiko Morimi
  • “20th Century Hotel”
  • “Fireworks”
  • Learn more about Tomihiko Morimi with the RJL podcast.

• Haruki Murakami

• “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey”
• “Cream”
• “The Folklore of Our Times”
• “Honey Pie”
• “Hunting Knife”
• “The Kingdom That Failed”
• “Kino”
• “Samsa in Love”
• “Scheherazade”
• “A Shinagawa Monkey”
• “The Town of Cats”
• “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”
• Edogawa Ranpo
  • The Hundred-Faced Actor
• 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
• Amy Yamada
  • “Magnet”

Anthologies

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

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