Best Classic Japanese Books to Read

Yukio Mishima’s Spring Snow is the first novel in his masterful series, The Sea of Fertility. Here we meet Shigekuni Honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his friend, Kiyoaki Matsugae.
Spring Snow

Junichirō Tanizaki’s magisterial evocation of a proud Osaka family in decline during the years immediately before World War II is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the twentieth century and a classic of international literature.
The Makioka Sisters

In the late nineteenth century, Tomo, the faithful wife of a government official, is sent to Tokyo, where a heartbreaking task is awaiting her. From among hundreds of geishas and daughters offered up for sale by their families she must select a respectable young girl to become her husband’s new lover. Externally calm, but torn apart inside, Tomo dutifully begins the search for an official mistress.
The Waiting Years

A Personal Matter is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose Utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child.

A Personal Matter

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain is a beautiful rendering of the predicament of old age — the gradual, reluctant narrowing of a human life, along with the sudden upsurges of passion that illuminate its closing.
The Sound of the Mountain

Natsume Soseki’s 1914 novel, which was originally published in serial format in a Japanese newspaper, “Kokoro” deals with the transition from the Japanese Meiji society to the modern era.

Divided into three parts “Sensei and I,” “My Parents and I,” and “Sensei and His Testament,” the novel explores the themes of loneliness and isolation.
https://quizlit.org/10-best-classic-japanese-novels#kokoro-by-natsume-soseki

This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.
Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society
https://quizlit.org/10-best-classic-japanese-novels#the-setting-sun-by-osamu-dazai

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour – it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.
https://quizlit.org/10-best-classic-japanese-novels#the-honjin-murders-by-seishi-yokomizo

“Night on the Galactic Railroad,” Miyazawa’s most famous work, tells the story of two boys as they journey upon a train that traverses the cosmos, learning the true meaning of friendship, happiness and life itself along the way.
https://quizlit.org/10-best-classic-japanese-novels#night-on-the-galactic-railroad-by-kenji-miyazawa

Seventeenth-century Japan: Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs.
https://quizlit.org/10-best-classic-japanese-novels#silence-by-shusaku-endo

In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. He sets off on a series of travels designed to strip away the trappings of the material world and bring spiritual enlightenment.
Best Travel Books to Read