Nov 27, 2024 05:00:00

A 'Japanese novel boom' is happening in the UK. What are the unexpected elements that are essential to this boom, such as 'cats' and 'ambiguity'?

In the early 2020s, Japanese novels have experienced an unprecedented boom in the UK, with Japanese novels accounting for 25% of translated novel sales in the UK in 2022 and over 40% of the top 40 best-selling translated novels in 2024. The Guardian, a British daily newspaper, has summarized the reasons for the boom in Japanese novels in the UK and the characteristics of popular Japanese novels in the UK.

Surrealism, cafes and lots (and lots) of cats: why Japanese fiction is booming | Fiction in translation | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/23/japanese-fiction-britain-translation

According to The Guardian, the best-selling translated novel in the UK in 2024 was ' BUTTER ' by Asako Yuzuki, which is based on the Tokyo metropolitan area serial suspicious deaths . This work, which depicts how a weekly magazine reporter is influenced by meeting with the perpetrator in prison, became a hot topic in Japan, but has also become very popular in the UK.

The popularity of Japanese novels in the UK is nothing new. In the 1990s, Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana both became big hits, with Murakami's

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle becoming a cult hit. According to Scott Pack, who led the purchasing team at the UK bookstore chain Waterstones in the early 2000s, at the time they were unable to keep up with the demand for any of Murakami's books that were published. Pack, a big fan of Murakami's work, said of the appeal of Murakami's work, 'It's so familiar, yet so strange.'

Yoshimoto, on the other hand, had her works translated into English in the late 1980s and early 1990s, earlier than Murakami, with titles such as ' Kitchen ' and ' Lizard .' 'It's very important to point out that she existed before Haruki Murakami,' Pack said. Yoshimoto's work is characterized by its depictions of marginalized women, often trying to overcome personal tragedies.

The Guardian points out that Murakami and Yoshimoto's works share commonalities, such as a sense of alienation,

surrealism and resistance to societal expectations. These elements can be found in best-selling Japanese novels in the UK today, but the range of Japanese authors has expanded significantly over the past decade.

In addition to Matsumoto Seicho's ' Dots and Lines (English title: Tokyo Express) ' ranking in the top 20 best-selling translated novels in the UK in 2024, novels written from female perspectives by Sayaka Murata, Hiromi Kawakami, Mieko Kawakami and others are also popular. In particular, the publication of Murata's ' Convenience Store Woman' in 2018 was a major turning point, and the work became a hit in the UK, selling over 500,000 copies. 'She's phenomenal,' said Jason Arthur, associate publishing director at Granta, a publishing house that has published three of Murata's translated novels, including this one.

Translator Ginny Tapley Takemori, who has lived in Tokyo for 20 years and translated 'Convenience Store Woman' into English, said Murata's success was surprising. Many people in the UK see 'Convenience Store Woman' as a book about autism, but Takemori said, 'That wasn't necessarily Sayaka's intention, but she doesn't mind people seeing it that way. She shows that the things we take for granted are actually not normal at all.'

In addition, when talking about the boom in Japanese novels in the UK, one thing that cannot be left out is the genre of 'comfort books,' which are marketed with slogans such as 'soothing' and 'heartwarming.' Although they are rarely featured prominently in the mass media or literary magazines, more than half of the best-selling Japanese novels in the UK are comfort books.

Comfort books have several recurring motifs, such as coffee shops (

e.g., Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Kawaguchi Toshikazu), bookstores and libraries (e.g., What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Aoyama Michiko), and cats ( e.g., She and Her Cat by Shinkai Makoto).

Jane Lawson, deputy editor at Doubleday, the UK's most successful comfort book publisher, published Hiro Arikawa's ' The Travelling Cat Chronicles' in 2017, which has sold over one million copies in the series. Lawson points out that what's interesting about comfort books is that they appeal to a wide range of readers, regardless of gender or age. This genre has existed for a long time, but with the influence of Instagram and BookTok , they are now seen as cooler.

On the other hand, The Guardian points out that publishers are so keen to replicate the common motifs found in comfort books that it has become a superficial trend, but because sales are so important to publishers, there is a strong tendency to try to imitate existing works with the mindset that as long as they sell, it's OK.

In fact, a British publisher has republished a book by Nanako Hanada, originally published in Japan under the title 'A Year of Meeting 70 People on a Dating Site and Recommending Books That Would Suit Them,' as 'The Bookshop Woman' in order to capitalize on the popularity of 'Convenience Store Woman.' According to Literary Agent Lee Kwan-ching, who specializes in East Asian literature, the book is selling very well.

Also, having a cat on the cover is apparently a great sales advantage, and the cover of the British edition of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Yagisawa Satoshi, which ranked fifth in the 2024 translated novel sales rankings, features a cat even though it has nothing to do with the story. Takemori also pointed out to The Guardian that 'cat books are not all that popular in Japan. They do exist, but they haven't become as big a boom as they are in the UK.'

Aside from the dominance of certain genres, The Guardian also noted that Japanese literature has other elements that make it appealing to British readers. Alison Fincher, who runs the website

Read Japanese Literature , points out that Mariko Ohara's sci-fi novel Hybrid Child , which depicts gender-transcending robots and AI, was published in Japan in 1990, and says, 'I realized that Japanese literature was starting to address issues of late capitalism, gender and feminist issues 20 years before English literature.'

Kantin also pointed out that many Japanese authors live in cities, which is reflected in their stories: 'I think the urban landscape is familiar to British readers, but also a little appealing because it's in the East.' Book blogger Tony Malone also argued that Japanese novels have a similar appeal, saying, 'What people are looking for is the other, not too far away - the other that feels comfortable.'

'Japanese novels are less judgmental than Western novels, which tend to focus on whether things are good or bad. In Japanese novels, the line between good and evil is much blurrier, bad characters can have some good qualities, and good characters often have flaws. The endings of the novels are also much more open than in Western novels,' he said.

The publishing industry is constantly subject to trends, and while the boom in Japanese novels is expected to pass, the top books will stick around, with Kanchin predicting that works such as Yagi Eimi's ' Kushin Techo ,' about a woman who rebels against society by faking a pregnancy, will become the subject of literary study.

The Guardian said, 'In the end, fiction sells because it transcends genre and language, whether it's a cat book or a crime novel, whether in Japan or anywhere else. As Fincher said of Murata's work, 'We're all a little weird, and human society is a strange thing. This novel is about all of us.''