Such is the writer’s love of repetition that a game of Murakami bingo resurfaces every time he publishes a new book.
Articles on Japanese literature
Displaying all articles
Taiwan Travelogue’s hands-on translation makes it a worthy winner of the International Booker 2026
A British take on an American classic, an absurdist video podcast, stories of displacement, a buggy nightmare and a book about an obsessive friendship.
Loneliness in women is on the rise in Japan, and friendship can help. But in this novel, connection quickly becomes obsession.
Meticulously constructed and shot, this four part anthology series gets Murakami’s love of moving from the mundane to the ridiculous.
The novel is filled with distinctive characters, shady dealings, women of moral ambiguity and heroes and villains alike.
The life and death of acclaimed writer Yukio Mishima is a cautionary reminder of the complex, sometimes dangerous relationship between creativity and fanaticism.
The Japanese author’s new novel features a walled town with no music or books, a speaking shadow, the ghost of a head librarian, and a teenage boy who remembers every book he has read.
I invite you to sample four tasty literary courses that present, for your delectation, the trials and travails of post-war Japanese women.
Haiku poems chart flowers appearing earlier and species retreating to the margins.
A classic of the Heian period of Japanese literature, the sensual delight of The Pillow Book encourages writers to ‘follow their brush’.
Japanese and English readers have read Murakami in quite different contexts and chronologies.
Humans have always been fascinated by the moon and before we could really get there we travelled to it in our stories.
A classic of modern Japanese literature, Black Rain has come to exemplify ‘atomic bomb literature’.
The late writer never shied away from hard topics, breaking down walls of silence around topics like disability and rurality in post-war Japan.
An uncompromising writer who wrote about the dark and light of postwar Japan
Top contributors
-
Senior Lecturer, Global and Language Studies, RMIT University
-
Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature, SOAS, University of London
-
Tutor/Lecturer in English Literature, Dublin City University
-
Reader in Japanese Studies, Newcastle University
-
PhD Candidate in Creative Writing, University of Bristol
-
Lecturer in Japanese Literature, University of East Anglia
-
Lecturer in Publishing, University of East Anglia
-
Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney
-
Lecturer in Japanese Studies (Japanese and Comparative Literature), University of Sheffield
-
Senior Lecturer in Fashion Communication and Promotion, Nottingham Trent University
-
Lecturer in Screen Industries, King's College London
-
Lecturer in Medieval English, University of Oxford