5 Wonderful Japanese Short Story Collections to Read
We’ve selected 5 Wonderful Japanese Short Story Collections featuring some of Japan’s most notable contemporary authors.
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5 Wonderful Japanese Short Story Collections to Read
Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders – locked in the embrace of an ominous and darkly beautiful web, their fates all converge through the eleven stories here in Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge. As tales of the macabre pass from character to character – an aspiring writer, a successful surgeon, a cabaret singer, a lonely craftsman – Ogawa provides us with a slice of life that is resplendent in its chaos, enthralling in its passion and chilling in its cruelty.
Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto
Effortlessly beautiful, nostalgic and melancholy, the stories in Dead-End Memories explore the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, find solace in the blissful moments in everyday life.
The daughter of a restaurant owner experiences a budding romance, accompanied by the ghosts of an elderly couple. After a scandalous near-death experience, an editor gains a new lease of life. A woman seeks refuge in the apartment above her uncle’s bar after being betrayed by her fiancé. As Yoshimoto’s gentle, effortless prose reminds us, one true miracle can be as simple as having someone to share a meal with, and happiness is always within us if only we take a moment to see it.
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
When a man’s favourite elephant vanishes, the balance of his whole life is subtly upset. A couple’s midnight hunger pangs drive them to hold up a McDonald’s. A woman finds she is irresistible to a small green monster that burrows through her front garden. An insomniac wife wakes up in a twilight world of semi-consciousness in which anything seems possible – even death.
In every one of these stories Murakami makes a determined assault on the normal.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya
In the English-language debut of one of Japan’s most fearlessly inventive young writers a housewife takes up bodybuilding and sees radical changes to her physique, which her workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking commuters struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon, until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A saleswoman in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won’t come out of the fitting room, and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her spouse’s features are beginning to slide around his face to match her own.
In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien–and find a doorway to liberation.
Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda
All of the stories in Matsuda’s collection are based, loosely, on traditional Japanese stories of yōkai, ghosts and monsters that figure prominently in the country’s folklore. But Matsuda puts her own clever spin on them, and each of her stories feels original and contemporary.
Where the Wild Ladies Are would make for great Halloween reading, although these aren’t the same old horror stories you’ve encountered before — they’re novel, shimmering masterworks from a writer who seems incapable of being anything less than original.
if you enjoyed 5 Wonderful Japanese Short Story Collections to Read, check out 10 Best Classic Japanese Novels
