this video is sponsored by squarespace the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence hello everyone and welcome to another video today i'm going to be speaking all about japanese literature and japanese novels now this particular video is very very long overdue essentially i was waiting until a year in tokyo was released before i made this video because in my brain these two things are thematically linked so yeah if you're new here hello my name is christy and about two weeks ago i released an illustrated tokyo guide and memoir called a year in tokyo there's a whole bunch of cool stuff in there like neighborhood guides guides to my favorite book shops and museums in tokyo cultural and folklore anecdotes stories about what it was like to be an english teacher so if you're interested in japan particularly in tokyo particularly in books set in tokyo you might like a year in tokyo which is now available on my website as an ebook let's get into actually speaking about the japanese books i have sitting next to me now every time i say japanese books i get worried that people are going to think i mean like nihongo not japanese language these are going to be books written by japanese authors translated into english and today i have 10 books well i mean technically i have 11 books but i didn't want this particular author to take up more than one slot so there's 10 books but really there's 11 books anyway let's get into the video and i can start recommending you my favorite japanese novels the very first one is moti moshi by banana yoshimoto this book is set in shimokitazawa which is kind of close to where i used to live in tokyo that was the main draw card for me and the reason i wanted to pick it up in the first place but i was absolutely delighted by how beautifully told this story is it's very short it's very concise and it's about a young woman who loses her father and so it's a story about grief and how she comes to terms with her grief this young woman is in her early twenties and it also explores the relationship she has with her mother who now needs to understand this new identity she has in the world as a widow it's set in 2010 which is kind of before shimokita started getting really like popular and touristy it was very hipster if no one uses the word hipster anymore but like you get the vibe there's a lot of like record stores and you know independent cafes it's a really really cool place i loved reading this novel i loved the setting i loved the emphasis on food i just thought it was such a lovely little story the blurb of the story makes it sound like it's going to be a ghost story or that there's going to be some sort of like paranormal or speculative element to it don't go in expecting that because you're going to be disappointed it really is a realistic contemporary novel but it's a beautifully told one i really enjoyed it and as i said i particularly love the imagery and the setting of shimokitazawa book number two on this list is strange weather in tokyo by hiromi kawakami this is my favorite book that i've read so far by hiromi kawakami i it's again a very small one it's a story about a woman who is in her 40s who is going to an izakaya which is kind of like a bar where people drink and they have like little like snack foods and stuff like yakitori and she bumps into one of her old teachers from when she was in high school he's now in his 70s and she can't remember his name to begin with so she just refers to him as sensei and this story follows on from there and explores their kind of unconventional relationship which develops it did take a little bit for the book to hook me in but by the end i was really really enjoying it i really liked the profound and quite sweet relationship that the main character develops with sensei it's a good sweet little concise story set in tokyo and i really liked the wholesome relationship between the main character and the sensei character as well book number three is the forest of wool and steel by natsu myastha this is such a sweet little book and i've never heard anyone else like but me speak about this book it's such a beautiful meditative slow little story there's not a lot of plot here so if your main thing that you love about books there's a lot of plot a lot of things happening probably not the book for you however i really enjoyed this it was very calming it was very slow and it's a story about a young man whose dream is to become a piano tuner every time i say that i picture like a piano with a tuna on it no like with my accent tuna and tuna are the same thing i really love this book i love the cover it's such a lovely like hardback cover i bought this book from the bookstore on the bottom right hand side of shinjuku station which is one of the bookstores i recommend in the tokyo guide that i wrote that is genuinely a very very good bookstore it's books kinokonia shinjuku right above natori there's a lot of books by japanese novelists that are translated into english that i never find anywhere else it's a really really good spot to go book shopping if you're into japanese literature anyway back on task i really enjoyed this book there's a lot of really wonderful natural imagery in here and it sort of considers how the wood in the forest where the trees are grown is going to affect the way the piano sounds it looks at interconnectedness and it's set in hokkaido which is northern japan so there's a lot of really lovely snowy imagery here and really the story just follows our main character as he learns to become a piano tuner and his relationships with his clients who are all like getting their pianos tuned at different points and um it's a really sweet meditative slow little story that i really enjoy if you want something calm and wholesome and comforting to read i definitely recommend this book book number four is convenience store woman by sayaka murata this is a very popular one that i've seen a lot of people recommend and there's a really really good reason why the main character is so interesting in this book it's a very short book i think it's definitely the shortest book on this list like you can read it in a couple or maybe like a few hours that's my only real criticism for convenience store woman is that i wish it was longer i wish it had a little bit more depth however i did really really enjoy it convenience store woman is a novel about a woman in her 30s whose name is keiko she works in a convenience store or kombini and she very least this is my reading of it i think that keiko is a non-neuro-normative protagonist i think that she has a lot of indicators that could suggest that she's potentially on the autism spectrum and so i found her psychology i found the way that she looks at the world incredibly interesting she looks at the convenience store as being like an aquarium she navigates the world by trying to copy the mannerisms of other people that she sees because she wants to fit in she wants to make her family happy and so her life is a constant act of performance in which she is always trying to make everything seem like she is normal like she's the same as other people that she looks at the world in a really really unique way i think that really is the main strength of convenience store woman i really enjoyed her character and i found it so interesting and so strong i loved how unapologetically unempathetic she was at times you know that's not something we get to see a lot particularly with female characters anyway i very much enjoyed convenience store women again i wish it was a little bit longer i wish i had a little bit more depth but otherwise it was a really unique story and a very very enjoyable one as well now before we jump into the rest of the recommendations i just wanted to thank the sponsor of this video which is squarespace squarespace is a website builder which allows people to create dynamic and stunning websites with ease i mentioned in last week's video that i recently got to set up my shop on my website it was the easiest process in the world and i'm so happy with how it turned out squarespace makes it super streamlined to connect with the people who are interested in the things that you make in addition to being affordable and easy to use squarespace has loads of benefits from fabulous e-commerce features to powerful analytics tools if you're looking to make a website head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com christy and jones to save 10 off your purchase of a website or domain now we are up to book number five on this list and this is the one where i felt like i didn't want to recommend two books for the same author and so i decided to shove both of these books into slot number five on this video this is the author who's definitely traumatized me the most on this list and if you haven't already guessed it it is haruki murakami how could we possibly have a video that recommends novels by japanese authors without including haruki murakami he's like definitely the most popular and probably successful novelist to come out of japan and by a lot of japanese people he's considered to be a very western influenced author and so it makes sense that his books have a lot of appeal for people in the west the two books that i want to recommend to you guys today from heroki murakami are norwegian wood and also the wind up bird chronicle i've spoken about both of these books to death on my channel because these books are so famous and so well known i'm not going to harp on about them for ages but this first one norwegian wood is a coming-of-age story it's a bildungsroman set in 1960s tokyo during the time of the significant student protests that were going on this story follows a main character whose name is toru wantanabe as he navigates grief concerns to do with his friends dealing with love and really just sort of it's a realistic book it's not magical realism or anything like that but it really is a coming-of-age story for toru i think you could argue that this is a dark academia book there's a lot of dark things in this and there's a lot of literary references in this so i do think it actually falls into like the dark academia category and also the book that has traumatized me the most the wind up bird chronicle because of this book i'm terrified of i'm also terrified of like the desert in mongolia so that is the legacy this book leaves in my brain the wind at bird chronicle is this epic labyrinthine sprawling story which is a magical realism story about a main character whose name is also toru not in any way related they just they apparently haruki murakami just really likes this first name for male characters this is a story about a man who i believe is a paralegal he quits his job because he's not really sure what he wants in life he's currently unemployed he lives in tokyo during the summer time his cat goes missing he decides to go looking for his cat and then his wife goes missing and the story sort of follows on from there there's a lot of very interesting surreal things that happen there's a lot of dipping in and out of dreams um tunnels all over the city it's as i've said labyrinthine winding it's all over the place but the beautiful thing about hiroki murakami is that his stories are so atmospheric the imagery is so strong he's definitely my favorite author on this list from a writing perspective like i love the way that huhi murakami writes he's so talented there's a reason why he's so so very popular lots of content warnings in both of these books lots of problematic stuff in both of these books so if you're a person who needs content warnings please please go look them up for reading either of these book number six on this list is sweet bean paste by dorian sakagawa i did not expect to have my heart absolutely stomped on by this book i expected to read a sweet little book about a dorayaki seller who may be set in the in the spring because of the sakura that's on the cover of this book this book ended up being a lot more profound than i had realized it was going to be it taught me a lot about a specific subject which i'm not going to spoil for you because it is a significant spoiler for the book but it gave me a lot of depth into this area of history that i didn't know anything about really in this context that's the vegas sentence i've ever really said about a book on this channel i'm very sorry sweet bean paste is a book about a man whose name is centauro and he works in a doriaki stool doriaki these like really yummy little pancake thingies that have fillings inside them they're kind of like taiyaki but round instead and centauro has not really had an easy life he has a criminal record he's now working in the storyaki stall and he meets an elderly woman whose name is tokue who makes this amazing red bean paste the filling for dorayaki and the book sort of follows on from there as their relationship develops there are bits of this set during sakura season and the imagery is really beautiful i did really enjoy it i thought it was really emotionally impactful and a very very good sweet short little book book number seven on this list is a book that i very much did cry while reading and it is the traveling cat chronicles by hiro arikawa i think this is the most i've cried while reading a book aside from pachinko and the song of achilles i have told this particular story a number of times so i'm sorry i've already heard it before when i was listening to this book i was still working in marketing and i was sitting at my desk listening to the audio book of this and i was just sobbing into my food like i had to stop listening to it because i was like if one of my co-workers comes up to me to ask me a question they're gonna be like what are you doing are you okay and so this book was absolutely devastating in the best kind of way it is a story about a man who's going on a road trip with his cat the cat is the narrator of the story the cat's name is nana because his tale is shaped like the japanese character for seven and that is all i'm willing to tell you about the plot it's genuinely so brilliant there's a lot of really wonderful natural imagery in this book as they're driving across japan the book also follows the relationships of the main character with people from his past and so there's a lot of character development here and character journeys it's a beautifully told story as i said very very very sad and i cannot recommend the audio book enough for this one i thought the audiobook was brilliant they picked a narrator that sounded so much like a sassy cat being snide about everything was absolutely brilliant i love this book i cannot recommend it enough book number eight on this list is probably my favorite book on this list no it's not number one or number ten that would require some sort of planning but just because i really love the themes of this i love that it's a speculative book i love that there's magic in it and this book is the lonely castle in the mirror by mizuki tsujimora this is a story set between tokyo and a secondary world it is a portal fantasy and the portal in this particular book is a mirror the main character's name is kokoro and she is pulled through the mirror into the lonely castle by a little girl wearing a wolf mask where she meets a whole bunch of other teenagers i believe they're in middle school or rather junior high school and the thing they have in common is that none of them go to school and they're given this task by the little girl in the wolf mask to find this key whoever finds the key has their wish come true however the second the key is found the castle disappears for everyone i really do love this story from an aesthetic perspective i love the references to fairy tales i love that it's a white a in translation which is not a type of book i get to read very often but what really struck me was the ending of this book the book was good the whole way through but it wasn't excellent until we got to the very end i really did like the social commentary in here and overall i just think it's such a beautiful beautiful book i found it quite profound and impactful look at the cover it's so pretty this is such a stunning book in more than one way i really really do recommend it it's such a brilliant book book number nine on this list is this one and it is how do you live by ginzaboro yoshino this is the book which the next hayao miyazaki studio ghibli film is based off of it was originally published in 1937 and it is a story about a young boy whose name is copper that is his nickname which is given to him by his uncle which is a reference to copernicus which i thought was really cute and so this story follows like his coming of age and his time in school with his friends and it weaves together copper's story with these really like philosophical letters that his uncle sends him which consider life and these are really big questions it's a really unique and interesting structure it's quite a slow book it's a very calm comforting book and i can definitely see how this is going to be a miyazaki film apparently this is one of his favorite childhood books and so that's why he wanted to make it into a film now to book number 10 the very final book of this list and it is before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi i listen to this one as an audiobook and i really really enjoyed it it's a sweet little story about i'm travel in tokyo there is this very peculiar cafe and a seat within this cafe where people can time travel however the time travel has a lot of really like interesting rules most of the time there's a ghost sitting in the time travel seat in the cafe and so there are only very specific periods where people can time travel you can only time travel within the cafe itself you cannot leave the cafe and you need to finish all of your time traveling before your coffee gets cold otherwise you will become a ghost this story kind of feels like a bunch of short stories woven together like set in the cafe we follow a bunch of different characters and how they use the time travel to explore their relationships with their loved ones and you know fix damage relationships and and communicate with people there are parts of it that are quite sad and quite emotional i really enjoyed the story i thought it was a really lovely mostly lighthearted take on time travel there are bits and this that are quite sad and quite poignant but overall it's a really enjoyable engaging short little book and that's the very last book on this list those are all 10 or rather 11 of my favorite books by japanese authors i hope you enjoyed the video thank you so so very much for watching it and also an enormous thank you to all of my patrons over on patreon for supporting my channel and the creative things that i make take care everyone and i will see you next time 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