Here at Books on Asia, we’re always looking for the next great read. Here are our March picks for new and upcoming releases on Japan or by Japanese authors:
Renae Lucas-Hall’s Picks:
- Bullet Train, by Kotaro Isaka (Transl. Sam Malissa)
In Bullet Train (Harvill Secker March 2021) five killers find themselves on a bullet train from Tokyo competing for a suitcase full of money. Who will make it to the last station? An original and propulsive thriller from a Japanese bestseller. Read Renae’s review of the book.
2. Three Streets by Yoko Tawada (Transl. Margaret Mitsutani)
In 3 Streets (New Directions, June 2021) each of these stories glows, and opens up into new dimensions of the work of the magisterial author of The Emissary and Memoirs of a Polar Bear.
Amy Chavez’s Picks:
3. Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys…and Baseball
Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic 60-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world. Read our review.
4. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun, (Knopf March, 2021) the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Read our review.
5. Noh as Living Art: Inside Japan’s Oldest Theatrical Tradition by Yasuda Noboru (Transl. Kawamoto Nozomu)
Noh is recognized as one of the oldest and greatest theatrical traditions in the world and inspired generations of writers and scholars in Japan and around the world. Noh actor Yasuda Noboru offers a uniquely personal and accessible introduction to noh as living art. Read our review.
Publisher: JPIC (March, 2021)
Chad Kohalyk’s Picks:
6. Every Human Intention: Japan in the New Century, by Dreux Richard
In Every Human Intention, (Pantheon, Feb. 2021) Dreux Richard presents post-Fukushima Japan in three illustrative parts, in areas where the consequences of national policy are felt: immigration, population decline, and the nuclear industry.
7. Buddhism and Modernity: Sources from Nineteenth-Century Japan Edited by Orion Klautau and Hans Martin Krämer
Buddhism and Modernity (University of Hawaii Press, Oct. 2021) offers original translations of key texts—many available for the first time in English—by central actors in Japan’s transition to the modern era, including the works of Inoue Enryō, Gesshō, Hara Tanzan, Shimaji Mokurai, Kiyozawa Manshi, Murakami Senshō, Tanaka Chigaku, and Shaku Sōen.
Leanne Ogasawara’s Picks:
8. An I-Novel, by Minae Mizumura (transl. Juliet Winters Carpenter)
An I-Novel tells the story of two sisters while taking up urgent questions of identity, race, and language.
9. Eating Wild Japan by Winifred Bird
In Eating Wild Japan (Stone Bridge Press March, 2021) Winifred Bird eats her way from one end of the country to the other in search of the hidden stories of Japan’s wild foods, the people who pick them, and the places whose histories they’ve shaped