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Best Japanese books that are translated in English.
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items Dive into the world of Japanese fiction. Here are the list of the books that I’ve read and liked. Mostly here will feel like a warm hug from your favourite blanket and some will leave you question about your own identity and sanity, and will surely g...
Sections
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cozy fiction
Thrillers, mystery, psychological 👻
cozy fiction
Wholesome reads for hearts that crave peace and possibility.
Sometimes, the sweetest things in life are born from the scars we try to hide.
Sweet Bean Paste a book by Durian Sukegawa and Alison Watts
When memories fade, the heart becomes the only lantern that can guide us home.
The Lantern of Lost Memories - Sanaka Hiiragi
Every farewell leaves behind a purr that never fades.
The Goodbye Cat - Hiro Arikawa
When you open the right book, you just might find yourself inside it.
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library a book by Michiko Aoyama
Sometimes, it takes a cat to remind us how to be human.
She and Her Cat: Stories
Beyond the mirror lies a place where broken hearts can find their reflection.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror - Mizuki Tsujimura
In a world that’s forgotten how to write, one letter can change everything.
It’s a celebration of ink, memory, and the timeless art of saying what truly matters.
Letters from the Ginza Shihodo Stationery Shop Paperback by Kenji ...
Some mysteries are best solved with a meal made from the heart.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Even when memories disappear, kindness multiplies infinitely.
Yoko Ogawa captures how love and understanding can endure even when memory fades.
The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel by Yoko Ogawa, Paperback
When you can’t belong anywhere, even your own skin becomes a mask.
It’s a poignant exploration of alienation, identity, and the quiet despair that hides behind a smiling face.
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, Paperback
If you’ve ever accidentally ignored three phone calls and felt zero guilt, this book is your spirit animal. The title promises stillness, and the author absolutely delivers, but not in the boring, preachy way you might expect. What I loved most was t...
A Perfect Day to Be Alone: A Novel by Nanae Aoyama, Paperback
Hiromi Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo is not a romance novel; it’s a perfectly slow-simmered meditation on companionship, where the shared menu is arguably more important than the thirty-year age difference between the characters.
The protagoni...
Strange Weather in Tokyo: A Novel by Hiromi Kawakami, Paperback
Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro feels less like a novel and more like an archaeological dig into the human soul, conducted in a heavy, almost paralyzing silence.
Reading it is like being locked in a room where a terrible secret is hidden, and your only task...
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, Paperback
Reading This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? is less like reading a novel and more like observing a fascinating, slightly unsettling psychological weather system.
Amiko, the protagonist, operates on a frequency only she understands. She's the kind of charact...
This is Amiko, Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura, Paperback
Our protagonist, exhausted by the utterly soul-crushing chore rotation at her office, finds the only foolproof way to earn respect, time, and privacy in modern corporate life: a fake pregnancy.
The genius here is the deadpan seriousness with which t...
Diary of a Void: A Novel by Emi Yagi, Paperback
We'll Prescribe You a Cat is a collection of charming, low-stakes vignettes that prove existential dread can often be solved by a well-placed head-butt from a purring companion. It's a remarkably gentle read that follows a very non-traditional therap...
We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, Hardcover
It’s an episodic, gentle masterwork that proves you can map an entire universe of heartbreak, quiet triumph, and sudden insight onto the fifteen minutes between Takarazuka and Nishinomiya-kitaguchi. Every chapter is a brief glance into a different pa...
The Passengers on the Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa, Hardcover
If you enjoy feeling completely destabilized by a narrative, welcome home. Fuminori Nakamura's My Annihilation isn't a book you read; it's a labyrinth you willingly get lost in. From the very first page, you realize the ground beneath the protagonist...
My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura, Paperback
If you need an escape where the stakes feel personal and the local eccentricities are completely justified, this is it. It’s warm, genuinely funny, and just weird enough to be addictive. It's the literary equivalent of staying up too late with a new ...
The Full Moon Coffee Shop: A Novel by Mai Mochizuki, Hardcover
I found myself holding my breath for whole chapters, not because of a cheap cliffhanger, but because the psychological tension that was palpable. It avoids all the standard genre clichés by making the stakes utterly devastating and entirely personal....
Love at Six Thousand Degrees by Maki Kashimada, Paperback
In your 20s, you should read this. I think.
A Woman of Pleasure: A Novel by Kiyoko Murata, Paperback
I just closed Breasts and Eggs, and I’m still buzzing from it. Honestly, trying to summarize this book as just being about 'the female body' is like calling the ocean 'a big puddle.' It’s a sharp, uncompromising, and sometimes startlingly funny look ...
Breasts and Eggs: A Novel by Mieko Kawakami, Paperback
This is revenge delivered with the clinical elegance of a surgeon's scalpel, a quiet, precise, and chillingly effective.
This collection of interconnected short stories operates less like a conventional narrative and more like a perfectly constructe...
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa, Paperback
This is a delightfully witty and profoundly weird series of vignettes where classic Japanese folklore figures; ghosts, ghouls, and other sundry oddities, are just trying to get by, holding down office jobs, dealing with toxic male colleagues, or navi...
The Woman Dies - Aoko Matsuda
The book is an enchanting collection of lightly interconnected stories, all centered on a community library and its enigmatic, slightly intimidating librarian, Sayuri Komachi.
This book is a soothing balm for anyone who's ever felt like they were of...
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library: A Novel by Michiko Aoyama, Paperback
This gentle Japanese novella by Satoshi Yagisawa is a quiet meditation on getting unstuck, and finding that maybe, just maybe, happiness smells like old paper.
If you’re looking for high stakes, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a book that acts...
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: A Novel by Satoshi Yagisawa, Paperback
It's everything you loved about the first book; the quiet observations, the comforting predictability of the street, and the deep respect for literature, but with a more mature, forward-looking perspective. It asks the central question: Once you find...
More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: A Novel by Satoshi Yagisawa, Paperback
The book is deceptively simple: it’s a character-driven slow burn that focuses on the quiet lives of the staff and the oddball locals who rely on the Konbini for everything from milk to life advice. It’s a masterful study in finding dignity and conne...
The Convenience Store by the Sea by Sonoko Machida
This book is essentially a road trip novel narrated by a cat who is utterly convinced he is the most interesting and important participant in the entire journey. And honestly? He’s probably right.
It reads like a quiet, sun-drenched documentary about...
The Travelling Cat Chronicles - Hiro Arikawa
Thrillers, mystery, psychological 👻
Psychological puzzles and killer twists you’ll never see coming.
If you ever find yourself on a secluded island with a group of mystery novel enthusiasts and a house shaped like a geometric polygon, run. Seriously.
The Decagon House Murders is less a typical whodunit and more a viciously elegant piece of architec...
The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, Paperback
The beauty of The Honjin Murders is how brazenly simple and yet flawlessly executed the central puzzle is. You aren’t just trying to figure out who did it, but how they managed to pull off a murder inside a locked room without disturbing a single sno...
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, Paperback
If The Decagon House Murders was a marathon, this collection is a series of intellectual 100-meter sprints.
This isn't a single epic mystery; it's a sleek, brutal demonstration of plot precision. Each story feels like a perfectly calibrated intellec...
The Shooting Gallery and Other Stories by Yuko Tsushima, Paperback
Ryū Murakami serves up a genuinely claustrophobic nightmare here, proving that the most terrifying monster is often the most polite one.
Our narrator, Kenji, is a seasoned nightlife guide in Shinjuku, but when he takes on the seemingly innocuous Ame...
In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami, Paperback
Natsuo Kirino’s Grotesque isn't so much a mystery as it is an intellectual vivisection performed by one of the most venomously judgmental narrators in modern fiction. The entire story, revolving around two women found dead, is filtered through a lens...
Grotesque: A Thriller by Natsuo Kirino, Paperback
read it and you’ll know why I personally recommended it.
Goth by Otsuichi, Paperback
In the Inugami family, fortune runs in blood, and so does vengeance.
The Inugami Curse
In a world built on pain, even the faintest glimmer can feel like gold.
It’s a story about finding light in the most unexpected places, even when everything else feels lost.
Gold Rush by Yū Miri
Each house tells a story, and each story reveals how easily comfort can turn into dread when you look too closely.
Strange Houses
The smartest crime isn’t the one that hides the truth, it’s the one that hides the heart behind it.
The Devotion of Suspect X