Japanese Short Fiction

Looking to step up your Japanese before that big trip next year? Are you getting prepared for an interview with a recruiter in Tokyo? Maybe you’re tired of reading the subtitles on the latest anime! No language is easy to learn without practicing - even if you know all of the rules and have watched the videos - you’ll still have trouble. Diving into interesting material (such as stories) can be the difference between mastering a language and never leaving the basic level.

Discover Japanese classics! This book contains four different short stories to introduce beginners to Japanese literature.

We’re constantly trying to improve and master new skills, and the Japanese language is no exception. A skill that can help open important doors in business and tourism, knowing Japanese will lead you towards a huge number of opportunities in life that will be worth every second dedicated to your studies.

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: It’s close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and, ideally, very little thinking. Her first gig - watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods - turns out to be inconvenient. Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to job, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all but something altogether more meaningful.

In this collection of classic ghost stories from Japan, beautiful princesses turn out to be frogs, paintings come alive, deadly spectral brides haunt the living and a samurai delivers the baby of a Shinto goddess with mystical help. Here are all the phantoms and ghouls of Japanese folklore: 'rokuro-kubi', whose heads separate from their bodies at night; 'jikininki', or flesh-eating goblins; and terrifying faceless 'mujina' who haunt lonely neighbourhoods.

At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.

Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is one of Japan's most beloved writers and poets, known particularly for his sensitive and symbolist children's fiction. This volume collects stories which focus on Miyazawa's love of space and his use of the galaxy as a metaphor for the concepts of purity, self-sacrifice and faith which were near and dear to his heart.

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom: A philandering husband receives a bestial punishment from a wife with her own secrets to keep; a music lover finds herself in a timeline both familiar and as wrong as can be; idle high school students find adventure in another dimension but aren't all that impressed; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bovary-like character from one of Suzuki's stories in Terminal Boredom, lands herself in a bizarre romantic pickle.

Contos de guerreiros japoneses revelará aos seus ouvintes os mais preciosos valores japoneses: disciplina, lealdade, dedicação, perseverança, auto sacrifício, humildade e devoção. Tal arcabouço ético e narrativas envolventes recebem a ilustração de Shusui Okakura e outros artistas, fazendo ecoar da forma mais bela o passado e a memória japonesa.

Una preciosa colección de cuentos de realismo mágico venidos del Japón tradicional, zen e intimista. Cuentos de tradición oral que han pasado a lo largo de los siglos de la boca de las abuelas a los sueños de sus nietos y nietas, siempre de corte fantástico, siempre con enseñanzas profundas y siempre portando la esencia de la identidad japonesa a través de su tradición.

From the unique standpoint of an American woman who married into a Japanese family and has lived in Japan for more than 30 years, Rebecca Otowa weaves enchanting tales of her adopted home that portray the perspective of both the Japanese and the foreigner on the universal issues that face us all - love, work, marriage, death, and family conflict.

※本タイトルの配信日・再生時間は前後する可能性があります。詳細は、後日更新予定。

Originally published in 1922 and translated by Takashi Kojima, this classic short story was the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, about the murder of a samurai. Told from the perspective of multiple witnesses.

岐路に立ち、惑う人々に贈る 喪失と再生の記憶。この物語は、あなたの明日をやさしく照らす――絵本作家として活躍する高城好子はかつて美弥子の継母だった。

Based on Japanese literature and foldlore, Kwaidan contains 17 stories. The story of Loichi, the blind biwa player who was called to perform for the dead; of Muso, the journeying priest who encountered a man eating goblin; of the samurai who outwitted the ghost of a dead man. All these plus 14 other spooly tales are included in this collection.

Strange Obsession is the story of the gorgeous young supermodel Amrita Aggarwal. Within months of her arrival in Bombay, she is the envy of its beautiful people. Then, one day, she attracts the attentions of a mysterious woman called Minx. As the months pass and the demands of her unwelcome suitor grow, Amrita's life turns nightmarish....

下巻は、様々な雑誌に寄せたエッセイや、シナリオ応募から小説家デビューまでを綴った連載など。こうして作家・湊かなえは誕生した！　ファン待望の、ベストセラー作家の初エッセイ集！

上巻は、朝日新聞、神戸新聞、日経新聞などに連載されたエッセイを収録。デビュー10周年記念の初エッセイ集、遂に文庫化！

A dream I wish to have in the night most often isn’t about dating a Hollywood star or making a great hit song. It’s not about my parents saying to me with tears, “We were wrong. We’re sorry”, either. It’s about numbers. I once saw a woman on TV who won four million dollars by the lottery with the numbers she had seen in her dream. Shortly after that, I myself saw numbers in my dream and began to buy a lottery ticket with those numbers.

滋賀県愛あふるるエッセイ。琵琶湖が何県にあるのか知らない人が実は多い、「千葉」や「佐賀」とよく間違えられる、比叡山延暦寺があるのは京都じゃない――