Great Japanese Stories: 10 Parallel Texts

by Jay Rubin (Editor)

A captivating selection of short stories in the original Japanese alongside their English translations This new dual-language edition of ten stories selected from The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories celebrates some of the very best twentieth-century literature from Japan. Each story appears in the original Japanese alongside an expert English translation, providing unique cultural insight and literary inspiration for language learners. Ranging from a witty send-up of modern social graces to a powerful evocation of the aftermath of the atomic bomb, this remarkable collection includes works from beloved authors Abe Akira, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Betsuyaku Minoru, Hoshi Shinichi, Kawakami Mieko, Kono Taeko, Murakami Hakuri, Ohba Minako, Ota Yoko and Uchida Hyakken.

Genres: Short Stories, Japan, Japanese Literature, Fiction, Asian Literature, Anthologies, Asia

272 pages, Paperback

Published January 11, 2024

About the author

Jay Rubin is an American academic and translator. He is most notable for being one of the main translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese, and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami.

Reviews

[spillingthematcha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Niestety nic szczególnego, oprócz opowiadań Mieko Kawakami i Ryūnosuke Akutagawy..

[Chinara Ahmadova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Həm ingilis, həm yaponca paralel mətnlərdən ibarət 10 hekayə. Murakamidən Akutaqavaya kimi məşhur yazıçılarla yanaşı, Outa Youko, Abe Akira kimi yeni kəşflər etdim. "Şaftalılar" ən sevdiyim hekayə oldu - uşaqlıq xatirələrinin real olub-olmamasını sorğuladan, böyüklərin yaratdığı travmanı dəyişərək xatırladan hadisələr - bəlkə uşaqkən daşıdığın şaftalı deyil, öz körpəliyin idi?

[Harsh Tyagi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a dual-language edition featuring Great Japanese Stories, selected from The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. The dual-language edition contains parallel texts in English and Japanese, providing a cultural insight and literary inspiration for language learners and enthusiasts. Challenging at its best, this edition is a collectible for linguists and readers of the Japanese language. The book is edited by Jay Rubin who's quite popular for translating Murakami's books.

Coming to the content, the ten featured short stories are from prolific writers like Haruki Murakami, Abe Akira, Kawakami Mieko and more, so they're obviously these carefully picked stories with themes ranging from witty commentaries on modern society and elements of magical realism, to the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and urban legends like prophecy beast. These unrelated stories are definitely a wonderful pick, with immaculate translation, and engaging stories open for interpretation, certainly leaving the readers with a lot to think about! The new edition presents to us this collection of exciting Japanese Stories, making them accessible. My personal favourite from the book is Factory Town, written by Betsuyaku Minoru, and translated by Royall Tyler, as it left me hooked, shocked, wondering and amused. This is a book that I'll cherish.

[Jimmy Ramirez Jaco · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this so bad but there was really only 3 short stories out of the ten that were interesting and not purely metaphorical.

☹️

[Ria Celine]

Read on a plane from Nagoya to Manila. Close call - the Japanese woman at the check-in refused to let me on the plane unless I can produce a Philippine birth certificate. I was scrambling to find a digital copy and Kirk had to interject. Imagine being refused entry to, of all countries, the Philippines? I digress.

If my Japan trip has taught me anything, your 617 day streak and 0.1% ranking of Japanese isn't enough to be really fluent in everyday conversations. Case in point: I can read in hiragana fine, but without Kirk, who's a katakana expert, and Meri, who's a great conversationalist, I'd still be stammering. I bought this book with the intentions of reading the english translations next to the original texts, and it was actually helpful practice.

PS. The Hiroshima story was harrowing but essential reading.

[serena · Rating 2 out of 5]

hey, i finished a book in a day! so glad to be reading again.

unfortunately this was a very mid collection and i didn’t enjoy most of the stories. the story on hiroshima left the strongest impression, and i enjoyed murakami and kawakami’s stories simply for their writing style. a real shame because i thought i’d love this.

[Rimantė · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very good selection of fairly strange stories

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonder what exact stories the translator couldn’t “keep out of her head” from these 10, and why.
To me the most compelling one was Hiroshima, City of Doom by Ōta Yōko, which expressed the inhumane element of the bombing very well. I have seen documentaries and read about it in school, but never from the firsthand through the eyes of a survivor. Now my perception is less ‘sanitized’/distant , the short story, read in one go on my way to uni, flashed blue and burned the way the bombing victims did. we forget, with great tragedies like this, that the conversations and feelings we experience are the same as any other day. Ordinary. Thought processes don’t become matured, lives just become split into ‘before’ and ‘after’. This frustration the main character felt and complete lack of control, existed before and after the tragedy. The thoughts were the same, anger at sickness and weakness, now anger at weakness and pain.I can really recommend this passage

Somehow I felt like the passages on natural disaster or Hiroshima were the easiest to understand. Some others were a bit bizarre : characters half animal half human, writing a bit like Kafka but less extreme, kind of alien ideas
But I enjoyed it!

[Sofie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall a great selection of short stories offering stylistic and thematic variety.

1. 1963/1982nen no Ipanema no musume
-rating: 5/10
Pretty easy to read, not great not terrible. Feels like classic Murakami.

2. Kata no ue no hisho
rating: 7/10
Pretty good satire. Doubles as an intense keigo refresher.

3. Momo
rating: 9/10
A beautiful story pondering the question to what extent we can trust our memory. Also quite challenging language-wise.

4. Kōjō no aru machi
rating: 8/10

5. Hako no naka
rating: 7/10

6. Ai no yume toka
rating: 7/10
A lot of dialogues, so a lot of colloquial, spoken Japanese. Lack of kanji made it hard to parse the text sometimes.

7. Unmei no machi Hiroshima
rating: 9/10
Describes the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima from a personal, first person point of view.

8. Yamauba no bishō
rating: 10/10
Not sure if it's the overt feminism or beautiful language, but something about this story deeply moved me. Includes a solid N2 katakana comprehension test.

9. Daijishin
rating: 4/10
Akutagawa here 3edgy5me tbf.

10. Kudan
rating: 9/10
Still not quite sure what it is about, but I'm digging it regardless. You also get some nice rarely used kanji practice as a bonus.

[Sabah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection of short stories - especially, ‘Hiroshima, City of Doom’!

The stories generally give an insight into life in Japan through the mundane but woven (in a few instances) in to magic surrealism or futuristic tropes?

Loved all of them and can’t wait to return to it!

[Jonathan Peto · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are ten stories here with the English and Japanese text mirroring each other on opposite sides. I read the Japanese text first, most of which was not on my "level".

I commented about a lot of the stories as I went, so maybe read details there!

My favorite story was probably Hiroshima, City of Doom by Yoko Ota. It was a very well done first person account of her experience of the atomic bombing. It was not at all what I thought it might be. It describes how that day unfolded, beginning with being awakened by a flash.

I enjoyed other stories too. Shoulder-Top Secretary by Shin'ichi Hoshi was an early favorite. Kudan by Hyakken Uchida, which closes the collection, was great. The main character is a kudan, a cow with a human face. I don't know when or how the change took place, but he had been human...

[Shoroli Shilon · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Not So Great Japanese Stories" - I would be convinced if the name of the book was such.

This book offers 10 short stories along with the Japanese parallel texts. I read most of the stories a year ago but as I remember now, I didn’t find any of them remarkable. Mostly are average and some of the stories didn’t even make any sense. I liked one or two as far as I recall.

Happy Reading...
🌊🇯🇵🍱🥢🍛

[Mees Loeve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Japanse literatuur blijft me verrassen. De luchtigheid maar ook ernst waar mee geschreven wordt is prachtig, of er nou over iets belangrijks of niet geschreven is. Prachtige selectie en vertalingen van Jay Rubin ook. Aanradertje als je iets zoekt dat vermaakt, soms prikkelt en snel leest!

[Dylan Kakoulli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Proof if proof be need be, that short stories just don’t quite the mustard for me sadly.

2/2.5 stars

[Sara Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading these!! Short stories aren't my usual favourites but I did like these ones. Full disclosure I did skip the hiroshima one

[C Hinz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as the Italian short stories but still a good read

[Athirah Idrus · Rating 3 out of 5]

For language learners, having parallel text is extremely helpful. Not only do you get to enjoy works of fiction in their original language, but you could also rely on the translation that could make up for either the lack of your own command of the language or the context that might be unfamiliar to you due to the cultural idiosyncrasies. 

Particularly for a Japanese learner whose native language does not make use of Chinese characters like me, sometimes I get easily put off with the sheer amount of unfamiliar kanji while reading Japanese fiction. Being able to check whether I understand either the words or proper context by referencing the parallel text immediately, helps me get into the story without being hampered by unnecessary effort to consult an external dictionary. 

This book is a collection of 10 short stories, typically lesser-known works by reputable Japanese writers.

Despite featuring a line up of popular writers, the stories leave much to be desired. Though I cannot fault the wordings or the writing style, many of the stories featured here were simply lacking in terms of plot/excitement. However, I thought the editor did a good job in curating the stories as they did cover a range of difficulty so I think Japanese learners of all levels could benefit from the book. The two standouts to me were Factory Town and Witch Mountain. 

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ipanema 4/5
Shoulder-top 3/5
Peaches 4/5
Factory 5/5
Box 3.5
Dreams 5/5
Hiroshima 4.5/5
Witch 4/5
Earthquake 3/5
Kudan 4/5
Very consistent overall and enjoyable

[Amani ALjanahi · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite collections of short stories, the curation of stories relating to destruction, heartbreak, love, just everything was so incredible to read. And it's always the best surprise to suddenly find Mieko Kawakami in the midst of it all.

[Lydia Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it was the allure of Murakami that drew me to this book, his short story, ‘Girl From Ipanema’, was probably my least favourite of the bunch (not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, by any means).
I was gifted this dual-language edition in anticipation of my upcoming move to Tokyo, on a dreamy escape to the Lake District with my favourite people in the world, from Grasmere’s ‘Sam Read’s Bookseller’, which is quite possibly one of my favourite book shops ever. It was a misty mountain day in late summer, and I admired the cover design while sipping a dark hot chocolate from Mathilde’s Café. It couldn’t have been a more perfect setting.
I devoured this book practically in one sitting, on a hot and humid evening in my new Tokyo Apartment, laying naked on the wooden floor and allowing the weirdness of the text to seep into my pores, in the weak hallway light creeping in through a crack in the door. All was quiet, but for the persistent hum of cicadas permeating the heavy night air.
These stories are strange, and are almost all utterly metaphorical. The overriding quality oozing from the pages is that of a surrealist painting, or a dreamscape. I particularly relished the story detailing the horrors of the Hiroshima attack—certainly the most heartrending of the collection, its energy simultaneously sombre and unreal—, as well as the otherworldly, folklore-esque fable of the mountain witch (particularly its function as a commentary on the female experience, the burdens of womanhood, and our bodies’ unusual capacities to harbour generational trauma).
f I could use a single word to encapsulate the peculiar essence of these stories, it would be ‘atmospheric’, or perhaps ‘curious’, ‘intriguing’ (never ask a literature graduate to be succinct). The overall impression of reading these texts is akin to the experience of entering a grocery store in the middle of the night: there is an eerie familiarity, as well as a palpable alien feel to the book, which might leave some readers unsettled, but kept me positively stimulated. I hate to use the term ‘thought-provoking’, but this short story anthology is just that. Weird, uncanny, and strangely profound, the underlying absurdity of the text, combined with its function as a linguistic or cultural tool for those attempting to learn Japanese (or simply become better acquainted with the country’s remarkable literary heritage in convenient, bite-sized chunks, offering all of the variety any reader could possibly desire.

[Mili Das · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Japanese Stories
10 parallel texts

This book is a heart touching collection of 10 Japanese stories that delves into the themes of war, loneliness, society, the indomitable social negligence which is often creating obscurity.

The stories mostly project war and described them in various perspectives on a large canvas.
The canopies of human life, and obscurity were tried to push away to see lives through greater lenses. The stories are creating tapestries of pain, desires and deaths, thorough and thorough narrative of our existence and intertwined with painful loneliness prominent in patchwork.

Japanese literature precisely brings closeness to nuances of human life and these collections are a bouquet of colours, colours of pain and intimacy. If you think pain and death is Grey then you might not read this stories yet. Japanese literature lovers don't miss this collection.

Rating - 4/5

[Craartology · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Japanese Stories: 10 Parallel Texts is a compilation of ten short stories by eminent authors such as Abe Akira, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Betsuyaku Minoru, Hoshi Shinichi, Kawakami Mieko, Kono Taeko, Murakami Haruki, Ohba Minako, Ota Yoko and Uchida Hyakken.

These stories capture the essence of devastation due to war and natural calamities like earthquakes, displacement, loss, loneliness in a sublime manner. The play of memory leading to nostalgia and melancholia envelope the reader through and through. A glimpse into culture, landscape and the resilience of the Japanese folk.

What I love the most is the fact that the translation holds these powerful emotions giving the metaphorical nuances a solid place in the reader’s mind. Reading the original parallel Japanese text is a plus for those who wish to enjoy both languages simultaneously.

Verdict: Sublime! ⭐⭐⭐✨

[Pablo Andrés]

Mi amigo Carlos, el maestro, me prestó este libro cuando fuimos a tirar al monte en mayo. La portada se me hizo bonita y nada más me lo dio. En una mecedora, la mañana siguiente, leí el cuento “Peaches” de Abe Akira. Es algo sobre desconfiar de la memoria, un trazo de la melancolía infantil, visiones de su madre durante la guerra. Se me hizo demasiado conmovedor, vulnerable y mientras leía, lloré. Me asomaba de reojo, no sé si Carlos podría ver mis lágrimas goteando en la hoja desde el otro extremo de la veranda. De algún modo, desde cierto punto en el cuento, ya sabía que lloraría.

No tengo mucho que decir sobre los demás. Había uno medio bueno de una señora viviendo lo mundano con su vecina tocando hasta el cansancio una pieza de piano. En fin.

[Lien Bruyninckx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Echt een heel goed boek ter introductie van Japanse schrijvers. Alle 10 verhalen vond ik goed gekozen en elk verhaal was compleet op zichzelf. Ik las in andere reviews dat ze het niet fijn vonden dat de meeste van deze verhalen als metaforen dienen, maar dat vond ik zelf net heel mooi aan dit boek. Er zijn ook verschillende elementen uit het magisch realisme en de Japanse mythologie aanwezig, elk verhaal is quasi een ander genre en laat een andere indruk na. De Engelse vertaling is prachtig, de vertaling loopt zeer vloeiend en deint mee op de emotionele golven van elk verhaal. Ik raad het boek sterk aan, zeker aan mensen die willen kennismaken met de Japanse literatuur.

[aoife · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of Japanese short fiction, the stories were well balanced in theme, geography, and the authorial gender. Murakami is a bit of a pervert, as expected. You can tell Rubin is most familiar with his work, the translation there flows the most intimately.

The standout was Dreams of Love Etc. by Kawakami Mieko— I will be seeking out her longer fiction soon.

Can see how this would be helpful for language learning, and will be looking for a similar collection in one of my target languages.

[Leonor · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s no secret how much I love Japanese literature, so having a book that combines various Japanese short stories written by my favourite Japanese authors, it’s a 10/10 point for me. Not only that, having the story written in Japanese on the neighbour page, just adds more delight to the reading experience.
It’s a simple book that gives a comfy feeling to the reader.
It’s great to escape a reading slump!

[Pooja Pillai · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a revelatory collection! I was already familiar with the work of Haruki Murakami (longtime reader) and Mieko Kawakami (only read Breasts & Eggs, which blew me away), and this was a great way to discover other writers, going back 100 years. I especially enjoyed Peaches by Abe Akira, Hiroshima, City of Doom by Ota Yoko (searing and gorgeous at the same time...how??) and The Smile of a Mountain witch by Oba Minako.

[Hilal Albayrak · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was exquisite to have a bite of everything that makes Japan, Japan. From their role in industrialization to their societal ebbs and flows as well as the mythological stories to their ancient achings, all of Japan’s metaphors and it’s realities. Though some of the stories didn’t really stick with me, some of them portrayed and some of them moved me. Great for people looking to have a fast paced emotional rollercoaster and a not so pressurizing reflection session in a Japanese setting.

[WR James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Asian literature, well up until that dreadful novel Butter, which seems to have infected recent publications with Wokery and Misandry. However, these stories are good, not great, but enjoyable reads with that unique view of the world that Japanese authors possess. if you want to get a flavour of Japanese story telling, these are a good introduction. The parallel text us also interesting. if I ever learn Japanese, that will be an interesting aspect.

[Rafael M. Aguiñaga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un mapa de autores del Japón moderno enfrentándose al absurdo.
Un choque cultural esperado que refresca mi mente y me muestra una forma nueva de revelar sucesos históricos, afrontar situaciones cotidianas o entender aun mas las diferencias y similitudes en sociedades apartadas por cultura.

Destaco como favorita Peaches de Abe Akira siendo un masterclass del story telling
Y como menciones honoríficas: The girl from Ipanema, In the Box (kono taeko, wow) Dreams Of Love y Hiroshima City of