Japanese

Classical Literature (until 1600's)

Title	Author	Year	Description	Cover
The Gossamer Years	Mother of Michitsuna	974
The Pillow Book	Sei Shonagon	1002
The Tale of Genji	Murasaki Shikibu	1021
The Tales of Ise	Anonymous	~
Hojoki	Kamo no Chomei	1212
Essays in Idleness	Yoshida Kenko	1330
The Tale of Heike	Anonymous	1371

Edo Period (1603-1868)

Title	Author	Year	Pages	Description	Cover
Life of an Amorous Woman	Saikaku Ihara	1686	403
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai	Yamamoto Tsunetomo	1716	180
Four Major Plays	Chikamatsu Monzaemon	~1720	220
Chushingura	Takedo Izumo, Miyoshi Shoraku, Namiki Senryuu	1748	183
Tales of Moonlight and Rain	Ueda Akinari	1776	248

Modern Literature (1868-1945)

Title	Author	Year	Pages	Description	Book Cover
Ukigumo	Futabatei Shimei	1887	381
Pagoda, Skull, and Samurai	Koda Rohan	~1889	280
In the Shade of Spring Leaves	Higuchi Ichiyo	1892-6	388
Japanese Gothic Tales	Izumi Kyoka	1900	212
The Broken Commandment	Toson Shimazaki	1906	276
The Quilt and Other Stories	Katai Tayama	1907	204
The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa	Kenji Miyazawa	1924	216
Kokoro	Natsume Soseki	1914	248
Botchan	Natsume Soseki	1906	176
I am a Cat	Natsume Soseki	1905	656
The Wild Geese	Mori Ogai	1913	128
The Paper Door and Other Stories	Shiga Naoya	1927	177
Rashomon and Other Stories	Ryunosuke Akutagawa	1922	268
During the Rain & Flowers in the Shade	Kafu Nagai	~1930	223
Musashi	Eiji Yoshikawa	1935	970
The Makioka Sisters	Junichiro Tanizaki	1943	544
Naomi	Junichiro Tanizaki	1924	256
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination	Edogawa Ranpo	~1940	240

Post War (1946 - present)

Title	Author	Year	Pages	Description	Cover
The Counterfeiter and Other Stories	Yasushi Inoue	~	124	"In The Counterfeiter, a writer is commissioned to write the biography of a famous painter but becomes fascinated by a man who produced forgeries of the artist's work. Obasute concerns a man's obsession with a legend of old women being taken to a mountain and abandoned, and his interpretation of the actions of the members of his family in light of this legend. The Full Moon is a story of company politics, particularly the rise and fall of the firm's president, told largely through incidents at annual company parties."
Snow Country	Yasunari Kawabata	1947	192	"To this haunting novel of wasted love, Kawabata brings the brushstroke suggestiveness and astonishing grasp of motive that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature. As he chronicles the affair between a wealthy dilettante and the mountain geisha who gives herself to him without illusions or regrets, one of Japan's greatest writers creates a work that is dense in implication and exalting in its sadness."
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories	Yasunari Kawbata	~	280	"Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the novelist Yasunari Kawabata felt the essence of his art was to be found not in his longer works but in a series of short stories--which he called "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories"--written over the span of his career. In them we find loneliness, love, and the passage of time, demonstrating the range and complexity of a true master of short fiction."
The Master of Go	Yasunari Kawabata	1954	208	"Go is a game of strategy in which two players attempt to surround each other's black or white stones. Simple in its fundamentals, infinitely complex in its execution, it is an essential expression of the Japanese sensibility. And in his fictional chronicle of a match played between a revered and invincible Master and a younger, more progressive challenger, Yasunari Kawabata captured the moment in which the immutable traditions of imperial Japan met the onslaught of the twentieth century."
The Setting Sun	Osamu Dazai	1947	175	"Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. The narrator is Kazuko, a young woman born to gentility but now impoverished. Though she wears Western clothes, her outlook is Japanese; her life is static, and she recognizes that she is spiritually empty. In the course of the novel she survives the deaths of her aristocratic mother and her sensitive, drug-addicted brother Naoji, an intellectual ravaged by his own and by society's spiritual failures."
No Longer Human	Osamu Dazai	1948	177	"Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while the protagonist feels himself incapable of understanding human beings.Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness."
Fires on the Plain	Shohei Ooka	1951	248	"This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Set on a Philippine island during World War II where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the blows of the American forces landings, Private Tamura's own private battles cost him first his hope and then his sanity as he loses his own tenuous ties with human society."
The Waiting Years	Fumiko Enchi	1957
Confessions of a Mask	Yukio Mishima	1948
The Temple of the Golden Pavillion	Yukio Mishima	1956
Spring Snow	Yukio Mishima	1963
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids	Kenzaburo Oe	1958
A Personal Matter	Kenzaburo Oe	1964
Black Rain	Masuji Ibuse	1966
The Box Man	Kobo Abe	1973
The Woman in the Dunes	Kobo Abe	1962
Silence	Shusaku Endo	1966
The Samurai	Shusaku Endo	1980
The Twilight Years	Sawako Ariyoshi	1972
Almost Transparent Blue	Ryu Murakami	1976
Kitchen	Banana Yoshimoto	1988
Norweigan Wood	Haruki Murakami	1987
The Elephant Vanishes	Haruki Murakami	1991
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle	Haruki Murakami	1995
The Housekeeper and the Professor	Yoko Ogawa	2003