And just like that, we wrapped up the first month of 2025. How was the first month of the year? I hope it was brimming with positive changes, growth, development, life-changing lessons, and blessings. Otherwise, I hope the coming months will usher in positive changes and reversal of fortune. I hope 2025 will go everyone’s way and everyone’s wishes and prayers will be answered. But before I could wave goodbye to the first month of the year, let me share the book titles I acquired during the month. I will be dividing my book haul into two parts. Because the first month – and perhaps even the entire quarter – of the year is dedicated to works of East Asian literature, the first part of this book haul update features works of Japanese writers. Without ado, here is the first part of my January book haul.

Title: The Miracles of the Namiya General Store
Author: Keigo Higashino
Translator (from Japanese): Sam Bett
Publisher: Yen On
Publishing Date: June 2021 (2012)
No. of Pages: 314

Synopsis:

When three delinquents hole up in an abandoned general store after their most recent robbery, to their great surprise, a letter drops through the mail slot in the store’s shutter. This seemingly simple request for advice sets the trio on a journey of discovery as, over the course of a single night, they step into the role of the kind-hearted former shopkeeper who devoted his waning years to offering thoughtful counsel to his correspondents. Through the lens of time, they share insight with those seeking guidance, and by morning, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Title: Malice
Author: Keigo Higashino
Translator (from Japanese): Elye Alexander
Publisher: Abacus
Publishing Date: 2015 (1996)
No. of Pages: 313

Synopsis: 

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka has been murdered. His body is found in his office, in a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and best friend, both of whom have rock-solid alibis. Or so it seems

Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognises Hidaka’s best friend from years ago when they were both teachers. Kaga joined the police while Nonoguchi became a writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. When Kaga suspects something is a bit off with Nonoguchi’s statement, he investigates further, searching Nonoguchi’s apartment. There he finds evidence that shows the two writers’ relationship was very different than they claimed.

Title: Real World
Author: Natsuo Kirino
Translator (from Japanese): Philip Gabriel
Publisher: Vintage Books
Publishing Date: 2008 (2003)
No. of Pages: 208

Synopsis:

In a suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls drift through a hot smoggy August and tedious summer school classes. There’s dependable Toshi, brainy Terauchi, Yuzan, grief-stricken and confused, and Kirarin, whose late nights and reckless behaviour remain a secret from those around her.

Then Toshi’s next-door neighbour is found brutally murdered and the girls suspect Worm, the neighbour’s son and a high-school misfit. But when he disappeared (having stolen Toshi’s bike and mobile) the four girls become irresistibly drawn into a treacherous vortex of brutality and seduction which rises from within themselves as well as the world around them.

Title: The Blanket Cats
Author: Kiyoshi Shigematsu
Translator (from Japanese): Jesse Kirkwood
Publisher: Maclehose Press
Publishing Date: 2024 (2008)
No. of Pages: 300

Synopsis: 

Is three days with a cat enough to change your life?

The troubled and anxious of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all have their problems, and they all want to believe that a feline companion from a unique pet shop can help them find a solution. But there are rules: the cats must be returned after three days, and they must always sleep with their own familiar blankets.

In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven such customers, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy.

But, like all their kind, the Blanket Cats are mysterious creatures with their own unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t what they really need.

Three days may not be enough to change your life. But it might be enough to change how you see it.

Title: Scattered All Over the Earth
Author: Yoko Tawada
Translator (from Japanese): Margaret Mitsutani
Publisher: Granta Publications
Publishing Date: 2022 (2018)
No. of Pages: 219

Synopsis:

Japan has vanished, and Hiruko thinks she might be the last Japanese person left. Travelling across Europe with a group of new-found friends – a linguist, a student moving between genders, a Greenlander hiding his nationality, and his broken-hearted lover – she pursues a mysterious man named Susanoo, who may be her last chance to once again hear the sounds of her native tongue.

A playful novel of mutable identities in a changing world, Scattered All Over the Earth is a synaesthetic love song to language and liminality, from a writer of infinite variety and meticulous craft.

Title: The Frolic of the Beasts
Author: Yukio Mishima
Translator (from Japanese): Andrew Clare
Publisher: Vintage International
Publishing Date: November 2018 (1961)
No. of Pages: 164

Synopsis:

Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, The Frolic of the Beasts tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle among a former university student, Kōji; his would-be mentor, the eminent literary critic Ippei Kusakudo; and Ippei’s beautiful, enigmatic wife, Yūko. When brought face-to-face with one of Ippei’s many marital indiscretions, Kōji’s growing desire for Yūko compels him to action in a way that changes all three of their lives profoundly. The Frolic of the Beasts is a haunting examination of the various guises we assume throughout our lives and a tale of psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and murder.