The best novels with Japanese settings not named Tokyo or Kyoto

Perhaps it's because I’ve lived in Fukui and have been to Echizen where the famous bamboo dolls are made that I found this novel so compelling. The novel’s uniqueness comes partly from its focus on a character who makes traditional bamboo dolls produced close to where I now live in Kanazawa, an hour north of Echizen, and part from the style of storytelling, which might be described as sparse but richly imagistic, and evocative of an all-but-lost past. The novel can easily be viewed as a modern folk tale, and moments unfold in the rural setting of 1920s Fukui that border on the mysterious-if-not-quite-supernatural. The relationship between the doll-maker and his wife is indeed strange, yet much can be extrapolated beyond that strangeness through all that’s left unsaid and un-acted on.

Again, I have a personal connection to the setting of this book, as I visited the same ryokan (Japanese inn) in the mountains of Niigata prefecture where Kawabata wrote much of this novel. There seem to be two types of reader experiences with this book—one in which readers feel the characters are too cold and unrelatable, and others who find a melancholy beauty in the old way people used to live and relate to each other. And there’s certainly warmth in the character of Komako, the geisha who wastes her dreams on an unrequited love, if not in Shimamura, the man who visits for long periods and plays with her heart. Snow Country contains such masterful writing that I copied it out once when I was younger in an effort to learn from Kawabata’s masterpiece.

Although longer than most Japanese novels in English translation, The Makioka Sisters was a novel that in my college years helped solidify my interest in Japan and helped put me on the path of a novelist whose own works are set in that country. This has long been a novel I’ve greatly admired and is far and away my favorite work by Tanizaki. The novel, set mostly in Osaka, tells one of the most emotionally resonant and deeply engaging family stories I’ve encountered in the Japanese canon. It’s a classic story of a well-to-do family in decline at the same time that WWII is about to change the world—and Japan especially—forever.

While the movie is admittedly a stunning achievement in cinema, the novel from which it is adapted surpasses it for the depths it plunges readers into the characters’ surreal and claustrophobic experiences and the life of the village in Tottori prefecture in which the story plays out. Truly frightening at times, the novel is of the legitimate can’t-put-down category and will stay with you long after you finish it. In my case it’s been 30 years! Kōbō Abe is a famous and influential Japanese writer, with many novels translated into English, but in my opinion this one is far and away his best.

This is a novel whose beautiful writing adds layers to this highly engaging story told from multiple time periods in a Malaysian woman’s life. Although the novel mostly plays out in Malaysia, it involves a Japanese character of great significance to the story and explores in engaging detail the art of Japanese gardening and the Malay experience of Japanese wartime colonialism. This is an important book, and while it won many awards, including the 2012 Man Booker Prize, I hope the book remains in the reading public’s eye for a long time. I greatly envy writing that can carry emotion this weighty while exhibiting such beauty and depth both in its character development and description of time and place.