She is observed at all times by the undetected narrator, the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. From a distance the Woman in the Purple Skirt looks like a schoolgirl, but there are age spots on her face, and her hair is dry and stiff. Like the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan, she is single, she lives in a small, run-down apartment, and she is short on money. The Woman in the Yellow Cardigan lures her to a job where she herself works, as a hotel housekeeper; soon the Woman in the Purple Skirt is having an affair with the boss. Unfortunately, no one knows or cares about the Woman in the Yellow Cardigan. That's the difference between her and the Woman in the Purple Skirt.Studiously deadpan, highly original, and unsettling, The Woman in the Purple Skirt explores the dynamics of envy, the mechanisms of power in the workplace, and the vulnerability of unmarried women in a taut, voyeuristic narrative about the sometimes desperate desire to be seen.

    Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable. The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections...But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.

    Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic. Royall Tyler’s superior translation is detailed, poetic, and superbly true to the Japanese original while allowing the modern reader to appreciate it as a contemporary treasure. Supplemented with detailed notes, glossaries, character lists, and chronologies to help the reader navigate the multigenerational narrative, this comprehensive edition presents this ancient tale in the grand style that it deserves.

    In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world. In “A First-Rate Material”, Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day. “Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her. “Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.In these strange and wonderful stories of family and friendship, sex and intimacy, belonging and individuality, Murata asks above all what it means to be a human in our world and offers answers that surprise and linger.

    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. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages, a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.

    Her family and friends are shocked and terrified. The pass—which tunnels through a mountainous region of southern Japan—has an eerie history: a hideout for robbers, murderers, and ghostly creatures lurking at night. Soon afterward, a young construction worker becomes the primary suspect. As the investigation unfolds, the events leading up to the murder come darkly into focus, revealing a troubled cast of characters: the victim, Yoshino, a woman much too eager for acceptance; the suspect, Yuichi, a car enthusiast misunderstood by everyone around him; the victim’s middle-aged father, a barber disappointed with his life; and the suspect’s aging grandmother, who survived the starvation of postwar Japan only to be tormented by local gangsters. And, finally, there is desperate Mitsuyo, the lonely woman who finds Yuichi online and makes the big mistake of falling for him.  A stunningly dark thriller and a tapestry of noir, Villain is the English-language debut for Shuichi Yoshida, one of Japan’s most acclaimed and accomplished writers. From desolate seaside towns and lighthouses to love hotels and online chat rooms, Villain reveals the inner lives of men and women who all have something to hide. Part police procedural, part gritty realism, Villain is a coolly seductive story of loneliness and alienation in the southernmost reaches of Japan.

    Genbei's Curse — A downtrodden woman loses her temper with her demanding, sick father-in-law. Years later, old and sick herself, she can now empathize with him.Trial by Fire — A true story passed down through the author's family of a gruesome trial to settle a land dispute in 1619.Love and Duty — The Japanese custom of "duty chocolates" (chocolates gifted by women to men on Valentine's Day) has repercussions for an American and a Japanese woman.Uncle Trash — Told in the form of newspaper articles, this is the story of an old man, his hoarding addiction, the annoyance it brings his family, and his eventual revenge.Watch Again — A man starts stalking his ex-wife and learns something about himself in the process.Three Village Stories — A tea ceremony teacher, a vengeful son, and an old man ostracized by his community are the protagonists in three vignettes of village life. The Rescuer — After meeting his death in a train accident, a young man finds himself in the position of rescuing others from the same fate.Showa Girl — Based on a true story from the author's family, a girl of fifteen has an arranged marriage with an older man just back from a POW camp in Russia in 1948.Rachel and Leah — An older American woman reflects on her long and not always happy marriage to a Japanese man. The Turtle Stone — Going from the 1950s to the present, this is the story of one man's efforts to keep the family cake shop alive in a Kyoto that is constantly modernizing.Illustrated throughout with the author's own black-and-white drawings, this captivating volume offers a unique and lovingly rendered insight into everyday life in modern Japan.

    They’re as potent as a putrid peach. Listening to her words your head starts to droop with their sticky juice trickling down your ears, until all you can do is succumb to the saccharine flow."From one of South Korea’s most acclaimed young authors comes the story of two sisters, Sora and Nana. When Sora was ten years old, and Nana was nine, their father died in a freak accident at the factory where he worked, his body sucked under a huge cogwheel, crushed beyond recognition. Their mother Aeja, numb with grief, gives in to torpor, developing an unhealthy obsession with the paradoxical violence implicit in life.Now adults, Sora finds herself dreaming of the past when she discovers that Nana is pregnant. Her initial reaction is shock – though they live together, she never even realised her younger sister had a lover – and Nana’s icy response to her attempt at being considerate (‘You hate this, so don’t pretend like I’m some poor pregnant woman you have to pity’) drives a wedge between the two. Can Naghi – the boy who shared their childhood, and the simple, nourishing meals cooked by his mother – help the sisters break free of Aeja’s worldview in which life is ultimately futile and love is always doomed?A delicate stylist with an unflinching social gaze, in I’ll Go On Hwang Jungeun has crafted a poignant novel with an uncanny ear for the unspoken secrets and heartaches buried beneath daily life and family ritual. Above all, it is a stunning exploration of the intensity of early bonds – and the traces they leave on us as we grow up.

    Curated by Jay Rubin (who has himself freshly translated several of the stories) and introduced by Haruki Murakami this is a book which will be a revelation to many of its readers. Short story writers already well-known to English-language readers are all included - Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata, Yoshimoto - but also many surprising new finds. From Tsushima Yuko's 'Flames' to Sawanishi Yuten's 'Filling Up with Sugar', from Hoshi Shin'ichi's 'Shoulder-Top Secretary' to Yoshimoto Banana's 'Bee Honey', The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty and comedy.

    When Harada, a jaded TV scriptwriter, runs into his long-dead parents one night, he enters the womb of a city whose living inhabitants have perhaps lost their souls. Can Harada save his?

    A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife — the days have more light and color. The novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, but then something happens….As Kenzaburo Oe has remarked, Takashi Hiraide’s work "really shines." His poetry, which is remarkably cross-hatched with beauty, has been acclaimed here for "its seemingly endless string of shape-shifting objects and experiences,whose splintering effect is enacted via a unique combination of speed and minutiae."

    The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he's been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on 'homestay' in the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide. It looks like Makoto doesn't have a single friend, and his family don't seem to care about him at all. But as the soul begins to live Makoto's life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him, and sees their true colors more clearly, shedding light on Makoto's misunderstandings.Since its initial release over twenty years ago, Colorful has become a part of the literary canon, not only in Japan—where it has sold over a million copies—but around the world, having been translated into several different languages. Now, Eto Mori's beloved classic is finally available in English.

    In the space of a single night, the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents—models, prostitutes, mobsters, and musicians—collide in a world suspended between fantasy and reality. Utterly enchanting and infused with surrealism, After Dark is a thrilling account of the magical hours separating midnight from dawn.

    It’s coming back to do it again and again… When the alien Gitai invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many raw recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to find himself reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On the 158th iteration though, he sees something different, something out of place: the female soldier known as the Bitch of War. Is the Bitch the key to Keiji’s escape, or to his final death?

    Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’