11 Great Japanese Novels in English to Read on Your Trip

When I read Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood during a trip to Japan, both the trip and the book sparked a fascination with Japanese novels that has stayed with me ever since. This list was meant to be a top five, but I simply couldn’t choose! So instead, here are 11 great Japanese writers and the their books, available in English, that make great travel buddies for a trip to Japan.

I’ve included Amazon links to each book, but you can also read where to get e-books and audiobooks for free for alternatives. (Check out how to gift Kindle books and how to gift Audible for digital versions.)

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1. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (11th Century)

The Tale of Genji is widely considered to be the world’s first novel and was written during the early 11th century by Murasaki Shikibu, a middle-ranking female aristocrat. That makes the world’s first novelist a woman of colour.

“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.” 

Translators: Suematsu Kenchō, Arthur Waley, Edward G. Seidensticker, Helen McCullough, Royall Tyler, Dennis Washburn.

The book is recognised as a masterpiece of world literature and a great place to start if you’re interested in getting into the greatest Japanese novels. The Tale of Genji depicts the culture of the Japanese imperial court and the rich complexity of human experience, told through monologues and beautiful poetry.

2. Yukio Mishima, The Sound of Waves (1954)

Yukio Mishima is one of the most important Japanese novelists of the 20th century. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award eventually went to his countryman Yasunari Kawabata (see below).

“In the pale light of daybreak the gravestones looked like so many white sails that would never again be filled with wind, sails that, too long unused and heavily drooping, had been turned into stone just as they were. The boats’ anchors had been thrust so deeply into the dark earth that they could never again be raised.” 

Translator: Meredith Weatherby

The Sound of Waves is a Japanese romance novel about a young fisherman and the daughter of the wealthiest man in the village, and how they must overcome the gossip from the other villagers.

Mishima led a pretty interesting life. He was a nationalist and founded his own right-wing militia. However, Mishima’s failed attempt at a coup d’état provoked him to commit ritual suicide by seppuku (disembowelment). His other recommended works include The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea, Death in Midsummer (short stories) and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

3. Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (1987)

No list of the best Japanese novels is complete without at least one of Haruki Murakami’s many works. It’s hard to pick just one; Norwegian Wood is my personal choice, but another great option is the international bestseller The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” 

Translators: Alfred Birnbaum (1989) Jay Rubin (2000)

Norwegian Wood is both a romance novel and a poignant coming-of-age story, which follows the lives of two college students in the aftermath of their best friend’s death.

4. Ryu Murakami, In the Miso Soup (1997)

Ryu Murakami (of no relation to Haruki) is a Japanese novelist whose novels explore human nature through themes of disillusion, drug use, surrealism, murder and war, all set against the dark backdrop of Japan.

In the Miso Soup follows the story of an overweight American tourist and the guide he has hired to give him a tour of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife. However, the guide begins to suspect his new client is actually a notorious serial killer.

“People who love horror films are people with boring lives… when a really scary movie is over, you’re reassured to see that you’re still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That’s the real reason we have horror films – they act as shock absorbers – and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you’d see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.” 

Translator: Ralph McCarthy

Murakami’s other recommended works include Almost Transparent Blue and Coin Locker Babies.

5. Natsume Soseki, Kokoro (1914)

Natsume Soseki is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history and his influence is seen in the works of many contemporary Japanese novels today. His portrait was featured on the 1,000 yen note from 1984 to 2004. His most notable works are Kokoro and I am a Cat.

Kokoro, which translates as ‘the heart of things’ or ‘feeling,’ is a story of friendship between a young man and an older man he calls “Sensei” (or teacher), during the transition period from the Japanese Meiji society to the modern era. The novel explores themes such as friendship, family relationships, and how to escape from fundamental loneliness.

“I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.” 

Translator: Edwin McClellan

6. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (1943-48)

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki is one of the most popular Japanese novelists after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his novels depict a shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions, whereas others portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society.

The Makioka Sisters falls into the latter category, with the story of four sisters and the declining fortunes of their traditional Japanese family. It follows the upper-class life of Osaka immediately before World War II and the theme of pride in a vanishing era.

“The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or convention.” 

Translator: Edward G. Seidensticker

7. Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country (1956)

Yasunari Kawabata was the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature and Snow Country is his masterpiece.

“The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.” 

Translator: Edward Seidensticker

Snow Country is a powerful tale of doomed love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan. The novel follows the meeting of a wealthy dilettante and a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome.

8. Yoko Ogawa, The Diving Pool (2008)

Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa’s The Diving Pool is a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, cruelty and innocence. In one story, a lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother, in another, a young woman records details of her sister’s pregnancy and in the third, a woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo.

“When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.” 

Translator: Stephen Snyder

9. Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen (1988)

Banana Yoshimoto is the playful pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto, who started using the pseudonym Banana at university due to her love of banana flowers; a name she chose because it is both “cute” and “purposefully androgynous.”

Kitchen was Yoshimoto’s English-language debut and is still considered her best-loved book. The whimsical novel juxtaposes two stories about mothers, love, tragedy and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of these women.

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed.” 

Translator: Megan Backus

10. Fumiko Enchi, The Waiting Years (1957)

Fumiko Enchi was one of the most prominent Japanese writers in the Showa period and is known to be Japan’s leading female novelist.

Enchi’s award-winning novel, The Waiting Years, is set in the Meiji period and depicts women who have no alternative but to accept the demeaning roles assigned to them within a patriarchal social order. The heroine is the wife of a government official, who is humiliated when her husband takes multiple concubines. It’s a story that consciously echoes The Tale of Genji.

“She must be responsible for everything, even the future security of the woman who was presumably to deprive her of her husband’s love.”

Translator: John Bester

11. Natsuo Kirino, Out (1997)

Natsuo Kirino is a Japanese novelist and leading figure in the recent boom of female writers of Japanese detective fiction.

Kirino’s award-winning literary mystery, Out, tells the story of a brutal murder in the suburbs Tokyo, as a young mother strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up the crime.

“When stones lying warm in the sun were turned over, they exposed the cold, damp earth underneath; and that was where Masako had burrowed deep. There was no trace of warmth in this dark earth, yet for a bug curled up tight in it, it was a peaceful and familiar world.” 

Translator: Stephen Snyder

The Best Japanese Novels Beyond Japan

Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World (1986)

Kazuo Ishiguro is the Nobel Prize-winning English novelist you probably know better as the author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, but his family moved to England in 1960 when he was five. He is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations.

In An Artist of the Floating World. one of the few novels Ishiguro sets in Japan, an artist decides to put his work into the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Later, in the aftermath of the war, the artist relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

“An artist’s concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.” 

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (2013)

Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and also a Zen Buddhist priest! Her unforgettable novel, A Tale for the Time Being, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The novel weaves together the stories of 16-year-old Nao in Tokyo, writing in her diary about school bullies and thoughts of suicide, and Canadian novelist Ruth, who discovers the diary washed up on the shore as debris from the 2011 tsunami.

“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren’t tears. She wasn’t crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.” 

On a personal note, A Tale for the Time Being has to be one of the best books I’ve ever read. I have thrust it into the faces of friends and family, and it definitely features in my 10 favourite books of all time.

Thoughts on Japanese Novels

Perhaps it’s the way the Japanese language works, the way the words translate to English, or even Japanese culture itself, that keeps me coming back for more when it comes to Japanese novels and novelists.

I believe there’s something in Japanese literature that can’t be found anywhere else. If I had to try and put it into words, I’d say that it’s a profound sadness; the way Japanese writers seem to understand and express the beautiful misery of human experience better than any other writers in the world.

I can’t wait to return to Japan one day, but for now I’m content to explore the country, its history and its culture through the pages of Japanese novels by the greatest Japanese novelists.

More of What to Read Where

For more about my trip to Japan, read A Day in Osaka Told Through Japanese Haiku and What’s the Beef with Kobe?

For more fantastic books and where to find them, read The Best Books to Read in Hong Kong, 5 Quirky Bookstores in Los Angeles and Where to Find English Books in Mexico City.