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Japan

The covers of Vengeance Is Mine, Under Our Skin, Negras, Rotten Evidence, MA, Owlish, The Love...
The Best Books We Read in 2023—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2024
By Words Without Borders
WWB staff members share their favorite translated books of the year and the titles they’re most looking forward to in 2024.
October 2023 The Muse In Rebellion Maru Ayase Interview Feature
The Muse in Rebellion: Maru Ayase on The Forest Brims Over
By J. R. Ramakrishnan
The opinions of those who can’t speak are often treated as if they don’t exist.
Translated from Japanese by Haydn Trowell
The covers of the nine books featured in the list: Suee and the Strange White Light, The House...
World Kid Lit Month: Read Around Asia
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Kelly Zhang & Hongyu Jasmine Zhu
This World Kid Lit Month, join us for a tour of Asia with the best of translated Asian literature for young people, including picture books, middle-grade and YA fiction, and graphic novels.
The twelve books featured in the list, in three rows of five
12 Translators Recommend Women in Translation
By Words Without Borders
For Women in Translation Month, a dozen translators recommend recent favorite books written and translated by women.
Vines on a beige wall
Photo by Belle Hunt on Unsplash
The Writer’s Wife
By Maru Ayase
“She has an innocence, a purity of mind like a delicate glass vessel, untainted by soiled ideas or thoughts.”
Translated from Japanese by Haydn Trowell
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist: Offshore Lightning, The Country of Too, No One...
The Watchlist: July 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new and forthcoming books translated from Arabic, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
The covers of the books featured in the list
The Best Books of 2022—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2023
By Words Without Borders
Our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite translated books of the year and the titles they're looking forward to in 2023.
A hospital waiting room with green seats next to bright windows
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
Ito Returns to Japan and Finds Herself in a Real Pinch
By Hiromi Itō
Early the next morning, I got a call from Mom. The first words out of her mouth: Will you take me to the hospital today?
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist
The Watchlist: December 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Mauritius, Romania, Japan, Spain, Germany, and Puerto Rico.
The covers of the ten books featured in the gift guide
Your 2022 Holiday Gift Guide to Reading in Translation
By Isabella Corletto
Ten recent books in translation that the readers in your life are sure to enjoy this holiday season.
Portraits of Yoko Tawada and Margaret Mitsutani
The National Book Award Interviews: Yoko Tawada & Margaret Mitsutani
By Words Without Borders
We’re living in a world where both languages and people are constantly in flux. In this novel, I wanted to focus on a small group of people making their way through that world.
The covers of all the books featured in the list
12 Global Children’s Books for History Lovers
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
In celebration of #WorldKidLitMonth, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp recommends 12 international books for young readers with an interest in world history.
two rows of people playing pachinko
Tischbeinahe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Pachinko Parlor
By Elisa Shua Dusapin
“Do you know what your grandmother’s mother did to avoid being subjected to speaking Japanese at school? She sliced off part of her own tongue.”
Translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
The covers of The King of India, Dogs of Summer, Yoga, Three Streets, Boulder, and A Summer Day...
The Watchlist: August 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new and exciting books in translation from Lebanon, China, Spain, Japan, and France.
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist: The Blunder, Carnality, Of Saints and Miracles,...
The Watchlist: July 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books from Cameroon, Mexico, Japan, Spain, Sweden, and Kazakhstan.
The book covers of At the Edge of the Woods, When Women Kill, People from Bloomington, Let Us Believe...
The Watchlist: April 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books translated from Ukrainian, Indonesian, Persian, Japanese, and Spanish.
The book covers of Policing the City, Scattered All Over the Earth, Palestine +100, The Way Spring...
The Watchlist: March 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books translated from Arabic, Chinese, Danish, French, and Japanese.
The Watchlist: January 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends exciting new books in translation from Mexico, Norway, Haiti, Argentina, and Japan.
A Japanese Lesson
By Silvana Paternostro
When do the provocative girlie girls turn into discreet wives who put on conservative dresses?
In Praise of the Nude Body
By Mutsuo Takahashi
They’re as naked as the day they were born
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Gifts
By Mutsuo Takahashi
The wisdom gathered from those wanderings is far deeper / Than that of ancient Greece
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
What We Lost: COVID-19 Beyond the Numbers
By Hideo Furukawa & Kathleen McCaul Moura
What has the coronavirus taken from us? We need to answer this in a way that isn’t expressed through numbers.
Translated from Japanese by David Boyd
Deceptive Simplicity: International Children’s Literature
By Daniel Hahn
I often feel that adults forget what children’s stories are capable of.
Firstclaw
By Sachiko Kashiwaba
Firstclaw’s love spells were rumored to be unusually effective.
Translated from Japanese by Avery Fischer Udagawa
Forced Confessions: On True Crime Writing
By Susan Harris
The pieces here map the translation of event into prose—the creation of true crime writing.
The Sixth Victim
By Shōko Egawa
It all began about the time that the men and women were finishing their first drinks.
Translated from Japanese by David Boyd
Salam
By Shirin Nezammafi
They were the hands of someone who had never heard of hand cream.
Translated from Japanese by Aoi Matsushima
From Rainbow Bird
By Shun Medoruma
Even after the credits stopped rolling and the blue government warning turned into a blizzard of static, Katsuya kept staring at the screen, a vague grin on his face.
Translated from Japanese by Sam Malissa
Beyond the Circle: Minority Voices of Japan
By Sam Bett
What these authors share, as insiders to the Japanese language, is a firsthand perspective on a culture whose monoethnic self-image often excludes them by default.
Tokyo Ueno Station
By Yu Miri
My reticence and my incompetence troubled me more than my appearance, but most intolerable was my unluckiness.
Translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles
Flight: An International Exquisite Corpse
By Pema Bhum, Claudia Salazar Jiménez, Krys Lee & Kanako Nishi
Four writer/translator teams work together to create a single story in multiple languages.
Translated by Elizabeth Bryer, Kang Daehoon, Tenzin Dickie & Allison Markin Powell
Remembering John Ashbery
By Hiroaki Sato
Ashbery fetched me a drink. I got drunk fast. And what did I prattle on about? The art of translation!
The World at Home: US Writing in Translation
By Susan Harris
This issue is not a departure but a continuation.
Roadkill
By Hiromi Itō
“Roadkill’s something you get used to seeing in America”
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Multilingual
Just Dinner, but Oh, What a Feast
By Rohan Kamicheril
Though food may fail to broker communication, this is often one of its major supposed roles.
Fear of Manners
By Kanako Nishi
Day in and day out, so many personal habits can drive us crazy.
Translated from Japanese by Allison Markin Powell
People Behaving Badly
By Susan Harris
Many greet the clean slate of a new year by pledging to chalk up only virtue and moderation.
Magnet
By Amy Yamada
It didn’t take much time before word spread that I was Yamamoto’s favorite.
Translated from Japanese by Yuri Komuro
Hauntings: International Ghost Stories
By Susan Harris
Ghosts and all they represent lurk perennially in the universal consciousness and in literature around the world.
Wheels
By Takako Arai
Perhaps she wanted her own fires to burn
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
Multilingual
Graphic Novels at WWB: The First Ten Years
By Susan Harris
The narrative threads that weave through the last ten years tell a tale in themselves.
Noodling in New York
By Akino Kondoh
No Japanese person would call a cat Thomas Jefferson.
Translated by Jocelyne Allen
Lessons for a Boy Who Arrived Late, Part II
By Carlos Yushimito
I hated how Margarita cracked her knuckles when it was her turn to play the piano.
Translated from Spanish by Valerie Miles
On Memory: New Writing from Japan
By David Karashima
We have recently been made increasingly aware of the everyday failings of our own memories.
Mihama Nuclear Power Plant
Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Far Shore
By Yoko Tawada
In Yoko Tawada's dystopian tale, the entire Japanese archipelago is rendered uninhabitable when a fighter plane piloted by a teenager loses control and crashes into a recently reactivated nuclear plant.
Translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles
The Memory
By Mitsuyo Kakuta
And then what did you do, he asked, and she said, I watched.
Translated from Japanese by Polly Barton
Learn
Fruit
By Hideo Furukawa
We simply couldn’t tolerate rogue fruit infiltrating Tokyo and corrupting public morals.
Translated from Japanese by David Boyd
When My Wife Was a Shiitake
By Kyoko Nakajima
When you hold an egg in your hand, its memories are communicated to you through its shell, you know.
Translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Learn
Glass
By Shun Medoruma
The fragments of the girl come tumbling down.
Translated from Japanese by Sam Malissa
The Trapped Boy
By Keiichiro Hirano
I watch the city lose its shape like a dripping watercolor.
Translated from Japanese by David Karashima
Learn
Stance Dots
By Toshiyuki Horie
Not once in his bowling alley had he heard that special, unforgettable sound.
Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel
Learn
Telegraph Pole
By Masashi Matsuie
The bus stop by the train station had moved. It was further away.
Translated from Japanese by Michael Emmerich
Waymarkers
By Natsuko Kuroda
The flowers depicted, which must have differed from one to the next, are also hazy.
Translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda
Where Have All the Sundays Gone?
By Mieko Kawakami
No matter how old I become, I will still go on like this, not knowing.
Translated from Japanese by Hitomi Yoshio
Learn
The Queer Issue V: Impressions from a Passing Train
By Rohan Kamicheril
The appeal of the Queer Issue is in seeing that great ambition writ small, in discovering the swarm of details and experience that cohere into the big picture of world writing.
Cavities and Kindness
By Nao-Cola Yamazaki
It was almost Christmas, I had a cavity, and I was in the process of getting dumped.
Translated from Japanese by Kalau Almony
Learn
Spirit Summoning, Part VI
By Sakumi Tayama
If you’re there, come to me. I’ll speak for you.
Translated from Japanese by Mark Gibeau
Spirit Summoning, Part V
By Sakumi Tayama
“These last few summonings . . . you haven’t been faking it, have you?”
Translated from Japanese by Mark Gibeau
Reunion
By Ryuichiro Utsumi
One day, when he went home after a long absence, he found the apartment empty.
Translated from Japanese by Toshiya Kamei
Learn
Spirit Summoning, Part IV
By Sakumi Tayama
“They say that virgins make the best mediums so you don’t need to worry about me.”
Translated from Japanese by Mark Gibeau