The bookshelf

Books worth travelling with.

Find a title, an author, a place, or a time you would like to visit.

Japan
Literary Atlas

Guides for this destination

79 books

After the Banquet cover

After the Banquet

Yukio Mishima

A restaurant owner's marriage to an idealistic politician turns private appetite into public conflict, as money and ambition press against deeply held principles.

Nonfiction
Bicycle Days cover

Bicycle Days

John B. Schwartz

A young American working in Tokyo discovers the uncertainties of adulthood, as company life and unfamiliar surroundings complicate his emerging sense of self.

Nonfiction
Chikara! cover

Chikara!

Robert Skimin

Three generations move between Japan and America, carrying family history through earthquake, depression and war across the turbulent years from 1907 to 1983.

Literary fiction
Exotics and Retrospectives cover

Exotics and Retrospectives

Lafcadio Hearn

Hearn's essays turn encounters with Japan into reflections on culture, inviting readers to consider the assumptions they carry into an unfamiliar world.

Nonfiction
Forbidden Colors cover

Forbidden Colors

Yukio Mishima

Beauty becomes a source of longing, power and hostility in modern Japan, where concealed desire draws people into a fraught emotional struggle.

Literary fiction
Geisha cover

Geisha

Liza Dalby

Step into the demanding world of geisha training through an outsider's rare participation, discovering the discipline and relationships behind its public image.

Culture & society
Gods of War cover

Gods of War

John Toland

Family ties connect America and Japan through war and occupation, revealing how the conflicts of nations reach deep into marriages and ordinary lives.

Nonfiction
Japan: An Interpretation cover

Japan: An Interpretation

Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn looks beneath unfamiliar appearances, offering Western readers an interpretation of Japanese society through its beliefs, customs and historical inheritance.

History
Japanese Art cover

Japanese Art

Joan Stanley-Baker

Journey through Japanese art from prehistoric beginnings to modern work, discovering how images and objects carry changing ideas across the centuries.

Nonfiction
Japanese Inn cover

Japanese Inn

Oliver Statler

Eighteen generations of one innkeeping family open a doorway into Japanese history, tracing everyday hospitality across centuries of social change.

History
Japanese Pilgrimage cover

Japanese Pilgrimage

Oliver Statler

Follow a Buddhist pilgrimage around an ancient circular route, discovering the landscapes, encounters and rituals that give a journey its spiritual shape.

History
Occupation cover

Occupation

John Toland

American and Japanese families become linked by marriage and war, as the occupation of Japan brings private relationships into the path of public history.

Literary fiction
Out cover
Screen adaptation

Out

Natsuo Kirino

Four night-shift workers in suburban Tokyo conceal a murder, entering a dangerous world where exhausting work, debt and desperation tighten their bonds.

Crime fiction
Rain in the Wind cover

Rain in the Wind

Saiichi Maruya

Four atmospheric stories explore Japan after the war, allowing the textures of memory and everyday life to emerge through quietly absorbing narratives.

Nonfiction
Ransom cover

Ransom

Jay McInerney

An American arrives in Kyoto hoping to escape his past, but the search for a new self draws him toward troubling questions of belonging.

Literary fiction
Religions of Japan cover

Religions of Japan

H. Byron Earhart

Explore the rituals, festivals and everyday relationships through which Japan's religious traditions have shaped a shared sense of sacred life.

History
The free Starter Passport

Your first journey. Your own pace.

Choose a free reading guide and receive literary Postcards in your inbox.

Get your Starter Passport ↗