We\u2019ve selected 5 Wonderful Japanese Short Story Collections featuring some of Japan\u2019s most notable contemporary authors. <\/p>\n
This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.<\/em><\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders \u2013 locked in the embrace of an ominous and darkly beautiful web, their fates all converge through the eleven stories here in Yoko Ogawa\u2019s Revenge. As tales of the macabre pass from character to character \u2013 an aspiring writer, a successful surgeon, a cabaret singer, a lonely craftsman \u2013 Ogawa provides us with a slice of life that is resplendent in its chaos, enthralling in its passion and chilling in its cruelty.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n Effortlessly beautiful, nostalgic and melancholy, the stories in\u00a0Dead-End Memories\u00a0<\/em>explore the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, find solace in the blissful moments in everyday life.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s bar after being betrayed by her fianc\u00e9. As Yoshimoto\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n When a man\u2019s favourite elephant vanishes, the balance of his whole life is subtly upset. A couple\u2019s midnight hunger pangs drive them to hold up a McDonald\u2019s. 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 \u2013 even death.<\/p>\n In every one of these stories Murakami<\/a> makes a determined assault on the normal.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n In the English-language debut of one of Japan\u2019s 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\u2019t come out of the fitting room, and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her spouse\u2019s features are beginning to slide around his face to match her own.<\/p>\n 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\u2013and find a doorway to liberation.<\/p>\n Buy Now<\/strong>: Amazon<\/a> | AbeBooks<\/a><\/p>\n All of the stories in Matsuda\u2019s collection are based, loosely, on traditional Japanese stories of y\u014dkai, ghosts and monsters that figure prominently in the country\u2019s folklore. But Matsuda puts her own clever spin on them, and each of her stories feels original and contemporary.<\/p>\n Where the Wild Ladies Are would make for great Halloween reading, although these aren\u2019t the same old horror stories you\u2019ve encountered before \u2014 they\u2019re novel, shimmering masterworks from a writer who seems incapable of being anything less than original.<\/p>\n5 Wonderful Japanese Short Story Collections to Read<\/h2>\n
Revenge by Yoko Ogawa<\/h2>\n
Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto<\/h2>\n
The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami<\/h2>\n
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya<\/h2>\n
Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda<\/h2>\n