Recommended Books

Black Rain (Japan's Modern Writers)

Black Rain is centered around the story of a young woman who was caught in the radioactive “black rain” that fell after the bombing of Hiroshima. lbuse bases his tale on real-life diaries and interviews with victims of the holocaust; the result is a book that is free from sentimentality yet manages to reveal the magnitude of the human suffering caused by the atom bomb. The life of Yasuko, on whom the black rain fell, is changed forever by periodic bouts of radiation sickness and the suspicion that her future children, too, may be affected.

lbuse tempers the horror of his subject with the gentle humor for which he is famous. His sensitivity to the complex web of emotions in a traditional community torn asunder by this historical event has made Black Rain one of the most acclaimed treatments of the Hiroshima story.

The Wild Geese

This modern classic, written in 1913, was the source for the highly acclaimed film, The Mistress

In The Wild Geese, prominent Japanese novelist Ogai Mori offers a poignant story of unfulfilled love, set against the background of the dizzying social change accompanying the fall of the Meiji regime. The young heroine, Otama, is forced by poverty to become a moneylender’s mistress. She is surrounded by skillfully-drawn characters—her weak-willed father, her virile and calculating lover (and his suspicious wife), and the handsome student who is both the object of her desire and the symbol of her rescue—as well as a colorful procession of Meiji era figures—geisha, students, entertainers, unscrupulous matchmakers, shopkeepers, and greedy landladies.

Like those around her, and like the wild geese of the titles, Otama yearns for the freedom of flight. Her dawning consciousness of her predicament brings the novel to a touching climax.

The Cape: and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto (Stone Bridge Fiction)

Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun

In 1853, few Japanese people knew that a country called America even existed. For centuries, Japan had isolated itself from the outside world by refusing to trade with other countries and even refusing to help shipwrecked sailors, foreign or Japanese. The country’s people still lived under a feudal system like that of Europe in the Middle Ages. But everything began to change when American Commodore Perry and his troops sailed to the Land of the Rising Sun, bringing with them new science and technology, and a new way of life.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

A miscellany of ghost stories, odd tales, and curious observations by a master storyteller who penetrated Japan more deeply than any other Westerner. Lafcadio Hearn captures the folk spirit and quaint “exoticism” of a land thought at the time to be both mysterious and sinister.

Lafcadio Hearn (18501904) gained Japanese citizenship and wrote many books about Japan for Western readers.

Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese

The fall of Singapore and the brilliant victories achieved since the start of the war mean we are protected, but I don’t know just how grateful I should be. ―Takahashi Aiko, housewife, February 1942

This is my final departure from the home islands. I have paid my respects to those who have helped me. I have no regrets. ―Itabashi Yasuo, navy kamikaze pilot, February 1944

We had rice gruel for lunch again. There was no tofu in it, but there were potatoes…. We went through with the closing ceremony and received our report cards. Everyone was there. From now on, I’ll persevere and not fail. ―Manabe Ichiro, primary school student, July 1944

This collection of diaries gives readers a powerful, firsthand look at the effects of the Pacific War on eight ordinary Japanese. Immediate, vivid, and at times surprisingly frank, the diaries chronicle the last years of the war and its aftermath as experienced by a navy kamikaze pilot, an army straggler on Okinawa, an elderly Kyoto businessman, a Tokyo housewife, a young working woman in Tokyo, a teenage girl mobilized for war work, and two schoolchildren evacuated to the countryside. Samuel Yamashita’s introduction provides a helpful overview of the historiography on wartime Japan and offers valuable insights into the important, everyday issues that concerned Japanese during a different and disastrously difficult time.

Tomo: Friendship through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories

Orchards

Winner of the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature
An ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book

After a classmate commits suicide, Kana Goldberg—a half-Japanese, half-Jewish American—wonders who is responsible. She and her cliquey friends said some thoughtless things to the girl. Hoping that Kana will reflect on her behavior, her parents pack her off to her mother’s ancestral home in Japan for the summer. There Kana spends hours under the hot sun tending to her family’s mikan orange groves.
Kana’s mixed heritage makes it hard to fit in at first, especially under the critical eye of her traditional grandmother, who has never accepted Kana’s father. But as the summer unfolds, Kana gets to know her relatives, Japan, and village culture, and she begins to process the pain and guilt she feels about the tragedy back home. Then news about a friend sends her world spinning out of orbit all over again.

From the Hardcover edition.