Japan, Asia and the Nobel Prize in Literature: Where to Start with Japan’s Laureates, from a Tokyo Bookseller

A wealthy, idle man from Tokyo keeps returning to a hot-spring town deep in the snowy mountains, drawn to a geisha named Komako who loves him far more openly than he can love her back.

My notesAlmost every Japanese person knows the opening by heart: “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.” It’s a book that tastes completely different when you read it again as an adult. Even for Japanese readers, it’s hard — and it’s lovely. Read it slowly, and let the silences between the lines do the work.

A lonely young student on a walking trip through the Izu Peninsula falls in with a troupe of traveling performers, and with its youngest member, a dancer. It’s a short story, perfect if you want to try Kawabata in a single sitting.

My notesThere’s a scene at an outdoor bath, and the awkwardness of having seen something you shouldn’t comes straight through the words. Before I knew it, I was standing on the side of the boy in love. If Snow Country feels like too much at first, start here.

Etsuko, a Japanese woman living alone in England after her elder daughter’s suicide, finds herself remembering a summer in postwar Nagasaki — and a woman and a little girl she knew there. The more she remembers, the less you trust her memories.

Why read itThis was Ishiguro’s first novel, and it’s set in the city where he was born. It’s short, quiet and unsettling, and you’ll want to go back to the first page the moment you finish. If you’re planning a trip to Nagasaki, it’s a haunting book to bring with you. In 2025 it was also made into a Japanese film directed by Kei Ishikawa, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Five linked stories about music and nightfall, from a guitarist playing in a Venice square to a jazz saxophonist recovering from plastic surgery in a Beverly Hills hotel.

Why read itYou’d expect five stories about “music and night” to be romantic. They’re actually full of irony and dark humor. I was completely won over by stories that refuse to go the way you expect, and by characters whose relationships always feel a little precarious. It’s the easiest way into Ishiguro if a full novel feels like a commitment.

A woman in a foreign city writes a list of white things — swaddling cloth, salt, snow, a white dog, a shroud — and through them, quietly mourns the older sister who died two hours after birth, before she herself was born.

My notesI’ve only read The White Book; her other novels were too difficult for me. Written in short fragments, some only a few lines long, it’s the gentlest place to begin with Han Kang. You can read it in an afternoon, and think about it for much longer.

Shunkin, a beautiful, blind and ferociously proud master of the shamisen, and Sasuke, the servant who devotes his whole life to her. Is it devotion, or obsession? The answer seems to change depending on how old you are when you read it.

My notesWhen I first read it in high school, I felt I had run into something tremendous. Rereading it as an adult, I found I could finally take it in, little by little. In Japanese, Tanizaki writes this story with almost no punctuation or paragraph breaks, and the contrast between his calm narration and the violence of the love is breathtaking. Tanizaki was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times before his death in 1965. In English, you’ll find “A Portrait of Shunkin” in the collection Seven Japanese Tales.

After a failed suicide attempt, a young Tokyo copywriter places a newspaper ad offering his life for sale, to be used however the buyer wishes. The people who answer it drag him into one bizarre, dangerous job after another.

Why read itMishima is one of the most famous names in Japanese literature, and his reputation can make him feel intimidating. This book cheerfully breaks that expectation: it’s astonishingly readable and simply fun. There are no smartphones and the city is much darker than today, yet it never feels old — if anything, it feels strangely modern. Partway through, I even felt a small thrill of pride: I’m actually enjoying Mishima. Mishima was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in the 1960s. He died in 1970, two years after this novel appeared.

On the night of a star festival, a lonely boy named Giovanni finds himself aboard a train traveling across the Milky Way — with his friend Campanella beside him.

My notesMany Japanese children meet this story at school. I only read it for the first time as an adult, and my first reaction was surprise that something this difficult had ever been in a textbook. When I finished, I went looking for other readers’ interpretations, and before I knew it I was reading it again. Miyazawa was barely recognized while he was alive and died at just 37; he became famous only after his death, so his life is sometimes compared to Van Gogh’s. It may be a book that’s better enjoyed as an adult.

Hiruko, a young woman studying in Europe, discovers that her home country — an island nation that sounds a lot like Japan — has vanished. To survive, she invents her own language, and sets out across Europe looking for anyone else who speaks her mother tongue.

My notesTawada is a true Japanese-language geek, always chasing how deep and how playful words can be. Her writing is full of a clever woman’s kind of sexiness, and she’s exactly how I’d like to grow older. Scattered All Over the Earth is her masterpiece.

On an unnamed island, things begin to disappear — birds, roses, photographs — and once they’re gone, people forget they ever existed. A young novelist hides her editor, one of the few who cannot forget, from the Memory Police.

My notesEven for Japanese readers reading in their mother tongue, Ogawa’s language is so beautiful it makes us nervous — like chasing words that glide like ice, so delicate and finite they might melt. If she wins the Nobel Prize, I think the world of Japanese literature will open up to so many more readers.