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10 of the most famous Japanese authors

Japanese literature ranks as one of the major literatures of the world, comparable in age, richness, and volume to English literature, though its course of development has been quite dissimilar. This dissimilarity highlights how different cultures observe the world differently from one another and capture those observations differently in their art.

Japanese literature reveals a distinct style, which has also greatly influenced both Eastern and Western literatures. It can be divided into four main periods: ancient, classical, medieval and modern (Pre- and Post-World War). Below are 10 of the most famous Japanese authors;

1. Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami – Wikimedia Commons

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer whose novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan.

His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for its use of magical realist elements. Most of his works use first-person narrative in the tradition of the Japanese I Novel. He states that because family plays a significant role in traditional Japanese literature, any main character who is independent becomes a man who values freedom and solitude over intimacy.

His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994鈥�95), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009鈥�10), with 1Q84 ranked as the best work of Japan’s Heisei era (1989-2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun’s survey of literary experts.

2. Y艒ko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa – Amazon

Y艒ko Ogawa is a Japanese writer whose work has won every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize. Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. The Memory Police was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.

Human cruelty features as a prominent theme in her work, as she is interested in exploring what drives people to commit acts of physical or emotional violence. She often writes about female bodies and the woman’s role in a family, which has led many to label her as a feminist writer.

Some of her most well-known works include The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Diving Pool and Hotel Iris.

3. Keigo Higashino

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino – Flickr

Keigo Higashino is a Japanese author chiefly known for his mystery novels which have won major Japanese awards and almost twenty of which have been turned into films and TV series. His works typically include scientific elements, such as nuclear power generation and brain transplantation. Sports references, such as archery and kendo, ski jumping, and snowboarding, also occur frequently.

In addition, he also writes essays and story books for children. His style of writing the latter differs from his novels, and he does not use as many characters as in his novels.

In 2006, he won the 134th Naoki Prize for Y艒gisha X no Kenshin, The Devotion of Suspect X, which is about Yasuko Hanaoka a divorced, single mother who thought she had finally escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi.

4. Banana Yoshimoto

NP Paperback Banana Yoshimoto – Amazon

Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto who from 2002 to 2015, she wrote her name in hiragana. Her themes include love and friendship, the power of home and family, and the effect of loss on the human spirit.

Her works include twelve novels and seven collections of essays (including Pineapple Pudding and Song From Banana) which have together sold over six million copies worldwide. 鈥淜itchen鈥� was her debut novel. 鈥淜itchen鈥� is a story about the persistence of loss and memory, and about finding one’s path through the world, with some romance and lots of delicious food along the way.

5. Ry奴 Murakami

Almost Transparent Blue by Ry奴 Murakami – Amazon

Ry奴 Murakami is a Japanese novelist, short story writer, essayist and filmmaker whose novels explore human nature through themes of disillusion, drug use, surrealism, murder and war, set against the dark backdrop of Japan.

He first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer’s literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent

His other best-known novels are Audition, Coin Locker Babies and In the Miso Soup.

6. Natsuo Kirino

Cover of Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino – Flickr

Natsuo Kirino is the pen name of Mariko Hashioka, a Japanese novelist and a leading figure in the recent boom of female writers of Japanese detective fiction. Her prose style has been described as “flat,” “functional,” and “occasionally illuminated by a strange lyricism.”

She is most famous for her 1997 novel, Out, which received the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, Japan’s top mystery award, and was a finalist (in English translation) for the 2004 Edgar Award. Out, tells a story of random violence in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works a night shift making boxed lunches brutally strangles her deadbeat husband and then seeks the help of her co-workers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.

Many critics challenged and criticized Kirino for her storylines, especially for Out, by saying women should only be writing love stories.

7. Yukio Mishima

Mishima Yukio – Wikiwand

Yukio Mishima was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, nationalist, and founder of the Tatenokai, an unarmed civilian militia. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century.

His works include the novels Confessions of a Mask, Kamen no and the autobiographical essay Sun and Steel. He was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, but the award went to his countryman and benefactor Yasunari Kawabata.

Mishima’s work is characterized by “its luxurious vocabulary and decadent metaphors, its fusion of traditional Japanese and modern Western literary styles, and its obsessive assertions of the unity of beauty, eroticism and death”.

8. Junichiro Tanizaki

Junichiro Tanizaki – Wikipedia

Jun’ichir艒 Tanizaki was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. He was one of six authors on the final shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964.

The tone and subject of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle portrayals of the dynamics of family life within the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently, his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of the West and Japanese tradition are juxtaposed.

9.K艒b艒 Abe

K艒b艒 Abe – Flickr

K艒b艒 Abe went by the pen name of Kimifusa Abe was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer and inventor whose noted for his use of bizarre and allegorical situations to underline the isolation of the individual.

His modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society has been compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia.

His Literary works include Daiyon kampy艒ki (1959; Inter Ice Age 4), Tanin no kao (1964; The Face of Another), Moetsukita chizu (1967; The Ruined Map), Hako otoko (1973; The Box Man), Mikkai (1977; Secret Rendezvous), Hakobune Sakura-maru (1984; The Ark Sakura), and Kangar奴 n艒to (1991; Kangaroo Notebook).

10. Sayaka Murata

Sayaka Murata – iNews

Sayaka Murata is a Japanese writer. She has won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and the Akutagawa Prize. Murata’s writing explores the different consequences of nonconformity in society for men and women, particularly with regard to gender roles, parenthood, and sex.

Earthlings, of her must read books, focuses on an 11-year-old girl named Natsuki, with her boyfriend and cousin, Yuu, who believes themselves to be aliens due to their tumultuous relationship with their family. The story quickly develops into a harsh tale containing themes of “sexual abuse, murder, and cannibalism.”