Experience New English Translations of Classic Japanese Literature

December 2019

Kick off the new year with classic works of Japanese literature, now available in English translations: novels by Yuko Tsushima and Natsume Sōseki, and two volumes of Japanese folk tales and ghost stories collected by Lafcadio Hearn.

Yuko Tsushima’s novel Territory of Light (originally serialized in the Japanese literary magazine Gunzō) follows a single mother and her young daughter across 1970s Japan. This notable work of autobiographical fiction (or "I-novel") offers pointed societal critiques while emphasizing the inner life of a protagonist who resembles the author. Learn more via The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

Natsume Sōseki's bestselling 1914 novel Kokoro explores generational transitions in early 20th century Japanese culture. A revered author whose face was featured on Japan’s ¥1,000 note for 20 years, Sōseki wrote about Japan’s struggles with modernization and Westernization. Learn more at Ganriki.org.

And two recently published collections offer a range of memorable Japanese folk tales and kwaidan (or ghost tales) that were gathered and retold by Lafcadio Hearn in the early 20th century. Some of the works in the anthologies (Japanese Ghost Stories and Japanese Tales) were adapted from Buddhist texts, while others were passed down via oral storytelling. Hearn and Sōseki were contemporaries, but while Sōseki explored Japan's complicated process of modernization, Hearn focused on preserving folk traditions. Learn more about the two new collections of folk tales and ghost stories via The New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal.