Open Books Challenge 2025: Books Set in Japan or by a Japanese Author

Updated December 31, 2024
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The travelling cat chronicles
Arikawa, Hiro
Paper Book
A book that "speak[s] volumes about our need for connection--human, feline or otherwise" (The San Francisco Chronicle), The Travelling Cat Chronicles is a life-affirming anthem to kindness and self-sacrifice that shows how the smallest things can provide the...
The Decagon House murders
Ayatsuji, Yukito
Paper Book
A classic Japanese murder mystery inspired by the golden age of British crimewriting.
A single rose
Barbery, Muriel
Paper Book
Shogun : a novel of Japan
Clavell, James.
Paper Book
FX/Hulu's Shōgun has won nineteen Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, and four Critics Choice Awards, among many other accolades. The most talked about and awarded series on television. Read the book that started it all! The classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a...
Under the midnight sun
Higashino, Keigo
Paper Book
From the acclaimed international bestseller Keigo Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X) comes a sweeping novel in the tradition of Les Miserables and Crime and Punishment. This is the compelling story of a brutal crime and the two teenagers--Ryo, the son of the murdered man,...
The heartbeat library
Imai Messina, Laura
Paper Book
The Heartbeat Library is a tender, contemplative, and uplifting novel about grief, friendship, and the many ways we heal, by the internationally bestselling author of The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World. On the peaceful Japanese island of Teshima...
Diary of a Tokyo teen : a Japanese-American girl travels to the land of trendy fashion, high-tech toilets and maid cafes
Inzer, Christine Mari
Paper Book
**2017 Creative Child Magazine Preferred Choice Award Winner** **2017 Moonbeam Children's Book Award Gold Medal Winner** A book for comic lovers and Japanophiles of all ages, Diary of a Tokyo Teen presents a unique look at modern-day Japan through a young...
Tokyo ever after
Jean, Emiko
Paper Book
Emiko Jean's New York Times bestseller and Reese Book Club Pick Tokyo Ever After is the "refreshing, spot-on" (Booklist, starred review) story of an ordinary Japanese American girl who discovers that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan! Izumi Tanaka...
Fifty words for rain : a novel
Lemmie, Asha
Paper Book
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick and New York Times Bestseller!   From debut author Asha Lemmie, "a lovely, heartrending story about love and loss, prejudice and pain, and the sometimes dangerous, always durable ties that link a family together." -...
Shuna's journey
Miyazaki, Hayao
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller An Eisner Award Winner From legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki comes a new manga classic, never before published in English! Shuna, the prince of a poor land, watches in despair as his people work themselves to death...
The Full Moon Coffee Shop : a novel
Mochizuki, Mai
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Translated from the Japanese bestseller, a charming and magical novel that reminds us it's never too late to follow our stars. "Mochizuki dazzles in her beautifully crafted contemporary fantasy debut. . . . This gentle fantasy is not to be missed."--...
Mina's matchbox
Ogawa, Yo?ko
Paper Book
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest...
Stranger in the Shogun's city : a Japanese woman and her world
Stanley, Amy
Paper Book
*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman...
The puzzle box : a novel
Trussoni, Danielle
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER . "A fun, DaVinci Code-style blend of puzzles, mysticism and high-octane action" (People, Best Books of the Month), from the author of The Puzzle Master "This rip-roaring adventure thriller is an escapist puzzle box of delights- a...
Lonely castle in the mirror
Tsujimura, Mizuki
Paper Book
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER!  A Studio Ghibli-esque work of Japanese translation "that lays bare the anxieties and desperation--and the small triumphs--of adolescence" (Locus), for fans of Mieko Kawakami's Heaven. Seven students find unusual common ground in...
Tokyo Junkie : 60 years of bright lights and back alleys . . . and baseball
Whiting, Robert
Paper Book
60 years of observation: an American journalist's memoir about Tokyo's modern urban transformation, its criminal underworld and, oh yes, baseball. Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic 60-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the...
Death on Gokumon Island
Yokomizo, Seishi
Paper Book
Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the fiendish Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo's classic Japanese mysteries.

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