For our latest List of 7, we are recommending books by foreign authors set in Japan, including both fiction and nonfiction titles.
The Inland Sea by Donald Richie
A distinguished American-born author who wrote extensively about his adopted homeland of Japan, Donald Richie is probably best remembered for his work on Japanese cinema, including his 1965 academic book, The Films of Akira Kurosawa. However, it was his 1971 timeless travelogue, The Inland Sea, that was widely considered his magnum opus.
Featuring stunning black-and-white photography by Yoichi Midorikawa, it’s a poetic exploration of life across the enchanting islands of the Seto Inland Sea, a small body of water lying between three of Japan’s major islands: Kyushu, Honshu and Shikoku. According to the author, the people there “live better than anyone else because they live according to their own natures.” His main aim with the book was to “observe what people were like when they had time and space.”
Two decades later, a travel documentary based on the book by Lucille Carra was released. Narrated by Richie, it was extremely well received and won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the 1991 Hawaii International Film Festival.
Shogun by James Clavell
Between 1962 and 1993, the late Australian-born, British-raised author James Clavell wrote a series of six novels, collectively known as the Asian Saga, which focused on European characters and their adventures in Asia. The most famous was Shogun, which he spent three years researching and writing before it went to print in 1975.
It’s an epic work of historical fiction that had, by 1980, sold more than 6 million copies. The story centers around navigator John Blackthorne, who is shipwrecked in Japan, and his subsequent interactions with powerful feudal lords, most notably Yoshii Toranaga. The two lead characters are loosely based on William Adams (Miura Anjin), who in 1600 became the first Englishman to reach these shores, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the country’s three “Great Unifiers.”
In 1980, a miniseries based on the book was released starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. It won three Emmys. The 2024 reimagining of the drama with Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai picked up a record 18. It also received four Golden Globes.
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
An emeritus professor of Japanese history, John W. Dower first visited this country in 1958 as an Amherst undergraduate. As well as writing several war-related books, he was an executive producer for John Junkerman’s Academy Award-nominated documentary Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima in 1986. Dower’s masterpiece, though, is Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, published in 1999.
Described by The New Republic as “the most important study of the Pacific War ever published,” Embracing Defeat is a superb examination of the US-dominated Allied Occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952. “The Americans,” he writes, “set about doing what no other occupation force had done before: remaking the political, social, cultural, and economic fabric of a defeated nation, and in the process changing the very way of thinking of its populace.”
The book covers various topics, including the country’s transformation from a militarist empire to a democracy, Tokyo war crimes trials and the drafting of the constitution. It received several accolades, including the 1999 National Book Award and the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Number9Dream by David Mitchell
When David Mitchell was named by GQ as one of “The 100 Most Connected Men in Britain 2015,” the magazine began by stressing that while he shares “his name with the Peep Show actor,” the award-winning author “lives a much quieter life.” Unfortunately, the picture the publication first posted online was of the Peep Show actor.
While he isn’t as famous as his namesake, Mitchell the writer is well known among literature fans, most notably for his Booker Prize-nominated novels, Number9Dream and Cloud Atlas. The former, set primarily in Tokyo, is a philosophical coming-of-age journey that follows 19-year-old Beatles fan Eiji Miyake, who leaves his home island of Yakushima for the capital to search for his long-lost father.
As with Haruki Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood, the title is inspired by a track written by John Lennon, namely “#9 Dream.” The novel is clearly heavily influenced by the work of Murakami, particularly The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is another highly recommended Mitchell book set in Japan.
Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace
David Peace, like Mitchell, was named as one of the Best Young British Novelists of 2003 by literary magazine Granta. A year earlier, he had completed his electrifying Red Riding Quartet series: a highly acclaimed tetralogy using fictionalized accounts of the investigation into the crimes committed by serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper.
Peace wrote the Red Riding Quartet while living in Japan’s capital, the setting for his next crime series. The first and arguably strongest of his Tokyo Trilogy is Tokyo Year Zero, a riveting fictionalized story told in the voice of Detective Minami, who’s on the tail of a criminal loosely based on Yoshio Kodaira.
Known as the “Japanese Bluebeard,” Kodaira was eventually executed after being charged with the rape and murder of 10 women between 1945 and 1946. Peace’s follow-up, Occupied City, is based around the 1948 Teikoku Bank robbery that left 12 people dead. The final installment, Tokyo Redux, centers on the disappearance and death of Sadanori Shimoyama, the first president of Japan National Railways.
Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein
Five years after moving to Tokyo to study Japanese literature, Jake Adelstein became the first foreign journalist to work at the Yomiuri Shimbun. He left the newspaper in 2005 and subsequently wrote an exposé for The Washington Post about an alleged deal a yakuza boss named Tadamasa Goto made with the FBI to gain entry into the United States.
Adelstein goes into greater detail about Goto and his alleged criminal activity in his first novel, Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, published in 2009. In it, he accuses Goto, whom he refers to as the “John Gotti of Japan,” of threatening to kill him. The memoir covers Adelstein’s career in Tokyo, beginning with how he got the job for the Yomiuri before going on to his dealings with Japan’s criminal underbelly. Some, including The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gavin Blair, have questioned the veracity of the journalist’s claims.
Even if it’s not all true, Tokyo Vice is still a fun read. The drama, starring Ansel Elgort, is also well worth watching.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
When Min Jin Lee was 19, she attended a lecture by an American missionary who worked with the Korean-Japanese community in Osaka. The missionary told a story about a boy who was bullied. It made her want to learn more about the history and lives of Zainichi Koreans in Japan. She eventually moved to Tokyo, staying for four years.
Six years after she departed, Lee published Pachinko, an epic Dickensian novel that became a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Divided into three parts, it focuses on four generations of a Korean immigrant family in Japan that struggles to fit in to a society that discriminates against them. “You are very brave, Noa,” Koh Hansu tells his son. “Much, much braver than me. Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”
A drama adaptation of Lee’s book by Soo Hugh premiered on Apple TV+ in 2022. The popular show was picked up for a second series, which was also critically acclaimed.
