In Ueno Park, Tokyo, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another’s lives. Dinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to...

On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to...

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses...

When Toru’s girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a PI he’s hired to find her. Ryoko’s past is shrouded in mystery, but the one clue to her whereabouts is a previous address...

When Ray is sacked from his job in London, he goes to Japan hoping to start his life afresh. Things begin well: he lands work as an English teacher and strikes up a relationship with the beautiful, intriguing Tomoe....

‘A brilliant modern love story. I found it atmospheric and transporting but also wise, clever and universal in its exploration of love, family and identity. I loved it’ Cathy Rentzenbrink Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking...

‘Flâneuse , noun, from the French. Feminine form of flâneur , an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities. That is an imaginary definition.’ If the word flâneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia – then...

Chronically underemployed Japanese-American sleuth Rei Shimura has taken a freelance gig with a Washington, D.C., alphabet agency that just might have ties to the CIA. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to go undercover as a...

Publishing in English for the very first time, Japan’s beloved coming-of-age classic on what really matters in life The streets of Tokyo swarm below fifteen year-old Copper as he gazes out into the city of his childhood. Struck by...

It’s just before New Year, and Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s nightlife. But, Frank’s behaviour is so odd that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his...