Japanese Archives - Page 2 of 32

The Silent Parade [Detective Galileo 4] by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray [in Booklist]

26 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

As the third narrator of Keigo Higashino’s internationally bestselling Detective Galileo series (four volumes available Stateside thus far), David Shih is also the first (finally!) to be facile with Japanese names and places. Although the Taiwanese American actor speaks only English, his conscientiously researched, accurate...

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd [in Booklist]

11 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW During a rare non-work outing, a colleague asks, “tell me something about you,” but the protagonist “couldn’t think of a single thing ...

Woman Running in the Mountains by Yūko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

In Woman Running in the Mountains, the late great Japanese novelist Yūko Tsushima (1947-2016) unflinchingly confronts the judgmental challenges an unwed woman faces when she defiantly chooses single motherhood. Takiko Odaka is 21 and already an independent spirit. As she goes into labor, she leaves...

Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani [in Booklist]

15 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Polyglot Yoko Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, introduced an ursine character named Knut in Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016) and opens her newest import with a same-named protagonist. Whether or not the two are related seems unlikely, yet in Tawada’s fascinating tale,...

Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

"Objects just seem to collect me, of their own volition," insists Haruki Murakami (First Person Singular): LPs, books, magazine clippings, pencil stubs, and, of course, T-shirts. Murakami T might detour from his global bestsellers, but it's a delightful glimpse into iconic Murakami through his casual...

Longing and Other Stories By Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, translated by Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy [in Booklist]

01 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature before his 1965 death at 79, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (In Black and White, 2018) remains one of Japan’s most important modern writers. These three stories date back a century, yet their universal theme, familial relationships, remains relevantly...

Never Open It: The Taboo Trilogy by Ken Niimura, translated by Stephen Blanford [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Three ancient, traditional Japanese myths get fabulously, subversively transformed in Tokyo-based, Spanish Japanese graphic creator Ken Niimura’s (Henshin, 2014) irresistible latest. “Never Open It” was, once upon a time, “Urashima Tarō,” a “Rip Van Winkle”-like tale about a fisherman who saves a turtle from...

Tales from the Café [Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 2] by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot [in Booklist]

22 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Expanding the insightful delights introduced in global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold (2020), readers are welcomed back to Funiculi Funicula, Tokyo’s time-travel café. The rules haven’t changed, especially the two most urgent: the temporal seeker must wait for the woman-in-white to vacate her seat...

Red Flowers by Yoshiharu Tsuge, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW The works of Yoshiharu Tsuge, credited with the "invention" of literary manga, finally arrived in the U.S. 65 years after he began publishing in Japan in 1955. His 2020 English-language debut, The Man Without Talent, was quickly followed by graphic powerhouse Drawn & Quarterly's...

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Cats have long appeared in Japanese fiction, especially popularized in I Am a Cat (1906) by the father of modern Japanese literature, Natsume Sōseki. Joining recent 21st-century mega-successes – The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura, for example – is the...

Sensor by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation

Japan’s graphic-horror auteur Junji Ito has yet another U.S. edition with a serialized manga originally published as Travelogue of the Succubus, compiled here as Sensor, translated by Jocelyne Allen, who also brought Ito’s Eisner-winning Frankenstein to English-language readers. Mount Sengoku erupted decades ago by the time...

Booklist Backlist: Japanese Graphic Horror [in Booklist]

29 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Lists, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

I can’t watch scary movies, but I love graphic horror on the page. And really, fear-mongering via Japanese manga – both series and standalones – promises some of the most affecting fright-fests. As we approach that most haunting time of the year, here’s some chilling company. Death...

Asadora! (vol. 3) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry [in Booklist]

28 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The third volume of Naoki Urasawa’s latest superb spectacle begins to distinguish individual story lines while overlapping various subplots. It’s 1964, five years since Japan’s deadliest typhoon. Asa is as righteously spunky as ever, determined to expose what happened the morning after she witnessed what couldn’t...

Himawari House by Harmony Becker [in Booklist]

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean, Repost, Singaporean, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Harmony Becker, who brilliantly created the artwork for George Takei’s Eisner-winning They Called Us Enemy (2019), makes her stupendous solo debut in what will prove to one of the best graphic titles of the year. The narrative might initially seem simple: a mixed-race U.S. teen...

Captivated, by You by Yama Wayama, translated by Leighann Harvey [in Booklist]

29 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Adolescent challenges are a ubiquitous rite of passage from which no child seems immune. And yet relatively recent manga sensation Wayama – her three titles published in her native Japan have each won major lauds – manages to charmingly defuse some of the most potentially...

Asadora! (vol. 2) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry [in Booklist]

02 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

And so the intriguing layers – always characteristic of auteur Naoki Urasawa’s series – begin to multiply in volume 2 of his latest Stateside import, brought into English by frequent manga translator John Werry (who lent his talents to the first volume, and the continuity...

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, translated by Lucy Rand [in Booklist]

01 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Italian, Japanese, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The titular phone booth is real: it stands at Bell Gardia in coastal Ōtsuchi, Japan, built in 2010 to communicate with a dead relative via an unconnected phone that carries conversations into the wind. Since the March 2011 Tōhoku disaster, 30,000 visitors have sought...

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW "Brutal" doesn't convey enough of the utter horror of Mieko Kawakami's sophomore import, Heaven. Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd, who enabled the stupendous success of Kawakami's English debut novel, Breasts and Eggs, Heaven further confirms Kawakami's superb literary ability to expose and...

Lovesickness by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen [in Booklist]

21 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

In the almost-quarter-century since his manga debut, Junji Ito has undoubtedly ascended to world-renown for his prolific tales of horror. Translated into English by Jocelyne Allen, who also translated his Eisner-winning Frankenstein, Ito’s latest imported collection opens with the five-part titular “Lovesickness.” In relentlessly foggy Nazumi,...

First Person Singular: Stories by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel [in Christian Science Monitor]

07 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami offers a collection of imaginative short stories with skewed elements that his many fans are sure to applaud. The announcement of a new Haruki Murakami title inspires gleeful anticipation: Will there be music (classical, jazz, Beatles – yes), baseball (certainly), local watering...

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