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Alison Fincher @alisonfincher.bsky.social · 20h

12yo LOVES Seiji Yoshida’s Houses with a Story (trans Jan Mitsuko Cash), found w/ help from @averyudagawa.bsky.social + SCBWI Japan. “Imagined houses and the people who make them home offer unexpected worlds to wander through and explore…” Anything else remotely like this awesome book out there?

bookshop.org

Houses with a Story: A Dragon's Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places to Explore

For fans of Studio Ghibli, artist Seiji Yoshida's fantastical, award-winning art book is a perfect gift that transports readers to imaginary houses, each with their own story to tell. A book to unlock...

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 07/10/2026

Literary fiction: - The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P by Rieko Matsuura (trans Michael Emmerich) - Solo Dance by Li Kotomi (trans Arthur Reiji Morris) Maybe not horror but thriller: - The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani (trans Sam Bett)

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 07/10/2026

Happy release day to The Tattoo and Other Stories by Junichiro Tanizaki (trans Paul McCarthy, Anthony Chambers + J. Keith Vincent). "This dazzling collection of short fiction features three stories that appear here in English for the first time, plus fresh translations of his best-known classics."

bookshop.org

The Tattoo and Other Stories

"A writer of wicked subtlety and grace." --The Sunday Times (London) The eight stories in this dazzling collection--including three that appear here in English for the first time--showcase the sunning...

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 06/10/2026

N Americans—Bookshop.org is running Anti-Prime FREE SHIPPING today + tomorrow (10/6-7)! Pick up your #bannedbooksweek titles or anything from your TBR. Support your fave indie shop or RJL! Our shop has tons of curated lists, bit here's a list of horror. bookshop.org/lists/japane...

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Japanese Horror Stories
By Read Japanese Literature

Visible covers include My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura, Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino, Out by Natsuo Kirino, Body by Asa Nonami, Now You Are One of Us by Asa Nonami...

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Takami Nieda @tnieda.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I will serving as the mentor for Japanese strand. Please apply and encourage others in your network to apply!❤️

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Brian Bergstrom @brianbergstrom.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Teaching Kokoro this week -- it seems trite to say, as it's so canonical, but what a book! An elegant knife straight in the heart, as the title implies Both translations have their merits as well! Which makes it fun to teach

My two English copies of Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki, one translated by Meredith McKinney, the other by Edwin McClellan

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 05/10/2026

Finishing up prep for RJL's horror ep— Forget Moaning Myrtle—who needs transphobic witches anyway? There's a terrifying tradition of Japanese toilet ghosts! Most Japanese homes used squat toilets over pits until at least the '50s. There are tales of monsters reaching up to pet girls' privates! 😱

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 05/10/2026

Only one more transcript to go before there are edited transcripts available online for all 51 RJL episodes.

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 05/10/2026

Happy to share that Episode 17—The Smile of the Mountain Witch finally has a transcript up. The episode goes great with our most recent episode (Japanese Women Writers) *and* it's a fun spooky season listen to prep for RJL's upcoming episodes Japanese Horror Stories.

readjapaneseliterature.com

Episode 17—The Smile of the Mountain Witch - Read Japanese Literature

The yama-uba is Japan’s legendary mountain witch

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Avery Udagawa @averyudagawa.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

November ‘26 will bring multiple master classes for literary translators able to get to Tokyo! Sam Malissa has a workshop at Waseda on November 11, and David Boyd and Asa Yoneda will headline a workshop held by #SCBWI #Japan on November 21: www.scbwi.org/events/scbwi...

scbwi.org

SCBWI Japan In-person Event: What We Talk About When We Cotranslate: A Conversation and Workshop with David Boyd and Asa Yoneda

Join SCBWI Japan for this in-person workshop on translation, Japanese to English, with renowned literary translators David Boyd and Asa Yoneda

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 04/10/2026

Here's some quality spooky season content! 😳

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 02/10/2026

I need to finish the last couple of chapters for this episode. (I read most for last year's episode on Lafcadio Hearn.)

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 02/10/2026

😳 I knew about the crackdown, but not that it would have required a content warning!

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 02/10/2026

This and more in RJL's upcoming episode on Japanese horror stories, currently in production. (For more on Lafcadio Hearn and The Peony Lantern, check out the RJL podcast.)

readjapaneseliterature.com

Episode 46—The Master of the Japanese Ghost Story - Read Japanese Literature

The enduring legacy of Lafcadio Hearn and the ghost story “The Peony Lantern”.

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 02/10/2026

Encho Sanyutei was a rakugo storyteller whose performance of Kaidan Botan Doro (The Peony Lantern) became the first oral version of the story ever transcribed, contributing mightily to the 1892 kabuki production, and thus to the version recorded to Lafcadio Hearn.

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 02/10/2026

"The kaidan is nearly extinct these days. There aren’t many artists who perform them anymore because there aren’t any more ghosts. These days ghosts are symptoms of nervous disorders, and Messieurs Enlightenment find kaidan to be distasteful." —Encho Sanyutei (1839-1900), being a sarcastic smartass

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hey, newbie J-E translators! Do you want to enter a contest and win fame and fortune (a prize and the respect of your new peers)?? Now you can!

jat.org

Twenty-third Annual JAT Contest for New and Aspiring Japanese<>English Translators (Oct.1-Nov.7) Source Text and Guidelines | Japan Association of Translators

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 01/10/2026

Did you enjoy RJL’s episode Cats in Japanese Literature? @zackdavisson.com’s Kaibyo was an essential source. It’s about to be back in print and full of so much fascinating information! If you like cats… or Japan… or Japanese cats… or Japanese stories about cats… this is a must-have TBR.

readjapaneseliterature.com

Episode 18—Cats in Japanese Literature - Read Japanese Literature

Japanese cat books and folklore + Sakutaro Hagiwara's "Town of Cats"

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 01/10/2026

Everything is beautiful and old-fashioned and pure (read “not queer”) in Japan. How dare you? 🫠

An Apple podcast review of Read Japanese Literature:

The kind of feminist, “queer-friendly,” and worldview-by-headlines political ideology burns the edges of this podcast, making it a kind of awkward relic of modern American privileged, self-abasing, academic supremacy. I’d rather just learn about and be excited to read Japanese literature, but this podcast seems to be 1/3 about the authors own ideological preconceptions.

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Jules Winter @roq11.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I was hoping RJL would help me choose even more books for #spookseason!!! 🍁📚👻 #spooktober #booksky

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Richard Medhurst📚️🇯🇵 @richardmedh.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Less than six months until the release of A Fool's Words by Ryunosuke Akutagawa on March 30. This is focused on his autobiographical and related works, after the broader fiction of The Essential Akutagawa. (Translated by me). www.tuttlepublishing.com/a-fools-word...

Ryunosuke Akutagawa: A Fool's Words
Thirteen Stories and Essays by Japan's Master Storyteller
Translated and introduced by Richard Medhurst

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Brian Bergstrom @brianbergstrom.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Happy Belated International Translation Day with my little stack✨ (minus We the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino, which I seem to have given my last copy away of)

The spines of books I've translated: capital from zero, the shining sea, the dilemmas of working women, sunrise, trinity trinity trinity, hotel lucky seven, and slow down

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 30/09/2026

"First, this bounty belies a world of books translated but still seeking a publisher, which fill Japanese-to-English translators’ hearts, hard drives, and file drawers. "Second, it obscures the fact that translators of books for youth cannot make a steady living through such work."

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 30/09/2026

Holly Thompson and Avery Fischer Udagawa wrap up: "Co-editing the Focus on Japan posts that appeared throughout September, #WorldKidLitMonth, reminded us of the abundance of translations from Japan for young people... Let us complicate the picture of abundance a bit..."

glli-us.org

#WorldKidLit Month Focus on Japan: Keep Reading!

WHEW! Co-editing the Focus on Japan posts that appeared throughout September, #WorldKidLit Month, reminded us of the abundance of translations from Japan for young people. We can confirm with suret…

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 30/09/2026

Nahoko Uehashi's The Beast Player (trans Cathy Hirano) is a high-fantasy, coming-of-age novel about a strong, female protagonist who learns to work together with the intelligent giant animals her society relies on.

bookshop.org

The Beast Player

Nahoko Uehashi's The Beast Player is an epic YA fantasy about a girl with a special power to communicate with magical beasts and the warring kingdom only she can save.Elin's family has an important re...

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 30/09/2026

Her work in English includes epic fantasy sagas like Moribito, The Deer King, and Kokun—The Girl from the West. Uehashi is also a Professor of Ethnology who completed her PhD on an indigenous Australian people.

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 30/09/2026

#worldkidlitmonth Nahoko Uehashi (1962- ) is a fantasy writer. She wrote her first novel in 1989; her second won an award from the Japanese Association of Writers for Children. (Both novels are untranslated.)

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Happy International Translation Day! Please read the books of this particular translator and keep me gainfully employed!

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Erica Friedman @okazu.yuricon.com · 29/09/2026

Your reminder that Sword of Paros will be the prettiest book you have ever owned and if you pre-order now, you'll get a signed shikishi and a classic tale of queer life, betrayal and love. store.mangamavericks.com/products/the...

store.mangamavericks.com

The Sword of Paros (Deluxe Edition)

This product is a pre-order. Orders containing this product are not guaranteed to ship until all items are in stock. Pre-orders from the Manga Mavericks Store also include an EXCLUSIVE shikishi board ...

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 29/09/2026

Happy N American release day to Nao-Cola Yamazaki's Don't Laugh at Other People's Sex Lives (trans Polly Barton). "This is an adolescent love story, portraying the relationship between a young art student and his married art teacher twice his age." *Premiered in the UK+ in spring.

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 29/09/2026

Happy N American release day to Nao-Cola Yamazaki's Beautiful Distance (trans Charlotte Goff). "A prize-winning bestseller in Japan... a profoundly affecting and intimate story that looks with honesty and tenderness at the journey towards the end of a life." *Premiered in the UK+ in spring.

bookshop.org

Beautiful Distance: A Novel

"Beautifully, startingly, explosively expansive . . . In this delicate, near miraculous novel, there is no path away from grief, but there is a kind of company in loss, and a continuation of love.” —f...

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 29/09/2026

Want to celebrate? North Americans can buy themselves a book from our Bookshop.org page. (RJL also has a wishlist! bookshop.org/wishlists/1e...)

bookshop.org

Read Japanese Literature Bookshop

The affiliate bookstore for ReadJapaneseLiterature.comand the podcast Read Japanese Literature.

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 29/09/2026

In Takuji Ichikawa's Monkey Man (trans Daniel Lilley and Lisa Lilley), a scrappy band of teenagers create a video game to teach the peers to care again and take on the sinister "Complex" that threatens the future of the world.

bookshop.org

Monkey Man

A world on the brink of disaster, where children with new attitudes are awakening with strange new abilities - but can they change the course of history in time to save the human race?Yuri, a 17-year-...

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Read Japanese Literature @readjapaneseliterature.com · 29/09/2026

He concluded that each writer "should pen a story to improve the world in their own respective specialist genre". His only novels translated into English are his contribution. They offer something that classic English-language YA dystopian novels don't—hope.

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