Vintage Classics Japanese Series
Classic Japanese Ghost Stories
Enter the haunted world of Japan in this spine-tingling collection of ghostly tales told and retold across the centuries.
From goblin-infested caves and haunted tombs to vengeful spirits and strange, sinister happenings, ancient Japan was a country and culture that lived between realms: the world of the everyday and the world of the supernatural. It was a place where men could be brought down by karmic forces or lured into deadly danger by ghostly apparitions, and where the land held sorrowful secrets or stories that long awaited an opportunity to reveal themselves and seek reparation.
Committed to paper at the turn of the twentieth century by a unique set of folklorists, the ghost stories presented in this anthology will transport readers to a time of magic and mystery.
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - nine masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
The Memory Police
On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . .
To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river, or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.
When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - nine masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
'Beautiful... Haunting' Sunday Times
'This timeless fable of control and loss feels more timely than ever' Guardian
'A dreamlike story of dystopia' Jia Tolentino
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING
‘I cried. . . cracking ending’ 5* reader review
‘I loved it!’ 5* reader review
‘A must read’ 5* reader review
‘Worth 6 stars… what a novel!’ 5* reader review
‘Dark and unsettling - a fantastic read’ 5* reader review
TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN SNYDER
Norwegian Wood
Autumn 1969, and soon I would be 20.
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - nine masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
‘Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami’s writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility’ Guardian
'Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and loss of faith' Sunday Times
'A masterly novel' New York Times
TRANSLATED BY JAY RUBIN
Spring Snow
Tokyo, 1912. Love blooms in the rule-bound world of Japan's aristocracy.
Kiyoaki falls for the exquisite and spirited Satoko. Although he has been raised by an aristocratic family, he does not belong in this world as she does. As the world around them changes and traditional powers wane, Kiyoaki is torn between the old and the new. Only when Satoko becomes engaged to a royal prince does Kiyoaki realise the magnitude of his passion.
‘An austere love story, probably my favourite of his novels’ David Mitchell
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - nine masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL GALLAGHER
The Housekeeper and the Professor (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
His memory lasts eighty minutes. The bond they form lasts far longer.
He is a brilliant maths Professor with a peculiar problem: ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, hired to care for him. Each morning, the Professor and the Housekeeper must be introduced again. He cannot remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant mathematical equations from the past.
When the Housekeeper’s son begins visiting after school, the Professor gives him the nickname Root and welcomes him into a world of numbers, baseball, meals and small rituals of care.
Ogawa writes with the same clarity and restraint as the equations the Professor loves. This is Japanese literary fiction in its most tender : a novel where mathematics becomes a way of noticing, caring and making a fragile world briefly whole.
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS: five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
'This is one of those books written in such lucid, unpretentious language that reading it is like looking into a deep pool of clear water...Dive into Yoko Ogawa's world and you find yourself tugged by forces more felt than seen' New York Times
The Makioka Sisters (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
Four sisters live under the fading name of an old Osaka family. As modern Japan gathers pace, the Makioka sisters hold fast to custom, family and one another.
In the years leading up to the Second World War, four sisters live in dilapidated houses in Osaka and Ashiya, each navigating her own complex relationship to the fading lustre of the Makioka family name.
Rich with breathtaking descriptions of ancient customs and an ever-changing natural world, Junichiro Tanizaki evokes in loving detail a long-lost way of life even as it withers under the harsh glare of modernity.
At the centre are the sisters themselves, bound by family duty, private longing and the expectations of a social world already passing away. Marriage negotiations, domestic rituals, seasonal beauty and quiet disappointments become part of a larger portrait of change.
Tanizaki finds drama in the quiet pressures of domestic life. The sisters’ hopes, compromises and obligations reveal the fading power of an old Osaka family, and the beauty of customs that can no longer fully protect those who live by them.
TRANSLATED BY EDWARD SEIDENSTICKER
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS: five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
'An exquisite novel about four sisters living though a turbulent decade...I'd put it in the 10 greatest books of the 20th century' David Mitchell
'A near-perfect novel' Hanya Yanagihara
Out
A young mother among them finally cracks and strangles her philandering, gambling husband. She confesses her crime to her colleagues and unexpectedly, they agree to help. But then the dismembered body parts are discovered, the police start asking questions and more dangerous enemies begin to close in.
OUT is a psychologically taut and unflinching foray into the darkest recesses of the human soul, an unsettling reminder that the desperate desire for freedom can make the most ordinary person do the unimaginable.
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)
Toru Okada's cat has disappeared.
His wife is growing more distant every day.
Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving.
As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out. He embarks on a bizarre journey, guided by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.
'Mesmerising, surreal, this really is the work of a true original' The Times
VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS series - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.