Culture Britain's Japanese literature boom driven by social media

In the UK, there's a surge in the popularity of Japanese novels translated into English, especially among the younger generation, primarily driven by social media recommendations. Platforms like TikTok, where the "BookTok" community shares their favourite books, genres, and authors, have motivated young British readers to explore more translated works. Specifically, novels that portray aspects of Japanese society and culture have resonated strongly with this demographic.

For British-based publishers like Pushkin Press, this online word-of-mouth is extremely important for book sales, according to publisher and managing director Adam Freudenheim. "The books becoming popular on TikTok are people being genuinely excited about them, not publishers," Freudenheim said in a recent interview. "If we try to push a book, that's not what works. It is readers responding to them. It is genuine." In short videos, many with classical, uplifting, or at times melancholic music playing in the background, TikTokers introduce books by authors such as Banana Yoshimoto, Mieko Kawakami and others. They rate the works, giving five stars for books they particularly enjoyed, and present their thoughts while becoming emotional at times when speaking about the books' themes on motherhood, loss, bullying and bonds of friendship.

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A large number of such videos, including those viewed more than 100,000 times, are posted on TikTok with the hashtag "#Japanesebooks" or other subcategories. On YouTube, there are many long videos that explain the contents of novels in detail. Last year, British newspaper The Guardian reported that while translated novels sold a total of some 2 million copies in Britain the same year, Japanese works accounted for one-quarter, or the largest portion, of those sold.

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Among the English translations of Japanese works published by Pushkin, short novellas by contemporaries of Murata, such as "Ms Ice Sandwich" (2020) by Mieko Kawakami, are popular. Another consistent bestseller is Ryu Murakami's 1980 novel "Coin Locker Babies," published in 2013. Freudenheim attributes the appeal of these shorter novellas not only to their brevity but also to the intriguing "foreignness or strangeness" of the titles translated from Japanese. For Seishi Yokomizo (1902-1981), Pushkin's top-selling Japanese author, his unique "Japanese twist" on traditional British crime fiction, similar to Agatha Christie's works, is a major attraction. Freudenheim believes this makes it "simultaneously familiar and different" for British readers. Yokomizo's mystery series featuring Detective Kosuke Kindaichi began with "The Honjin Murders," initially published in 1947 and released by Pushkin in 2019.

More news on the Japanee literature boom in the UK by the Guardian:


According to Nielsen BookScan, in 2022, Japanese fiction accounted for a significant 25% of all translated fiction sales in the UK. This dominance has only intensified this year, with 43% of the top 40 translated fiction titles for 2024 being Japanese. Asako Yuzuki's satirical crime novel Butter topped the list and won the Breakthrough Author award at the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards.

The popularity of modern Japanese fiction in the UK is not a recent development. In the 1990s, Haruki Murakami emerged as a global literary sensation, gaining significant traction in Britain with the publication of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Harvill Press in 1998. Scott Pack, a former buyer at Waterstones, recalls the considerable attention given to Murakami's works during the early 2000s. This week, Murakami's 15th novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, is being released, which delves into a mysterious walled town and the protagonist's pursuit of love. The enduring success of Murakami's books, often characterized by lonely protagonists, jazz, cats, and fantastical elements, can be attributed to their accessibility and unique blend of the ordinary and the extraordinary.

Granta, one of the publishers I work for, publishes Sayaka Murata's books in the UK. I'm hoping that one day I'll get to proofread her work, but I'm better at non-fiction work.

Lothor said:

Granta, one of the publishers I work for, publishes Sayaka Murata's books in the UK. I'm hoping that one day I'll get to proofread her work, but I'm better at non-fiction work.

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I hope you'll get the job!

I found Convenience Store Woman a bit hard to digest and—to be honest—could not comprehend the acclaim. It's not my type of reading. I have Earthlings and Life Ceremony waiting, so my final judgment is still out.

My wife reads nonstop and recently found some great Japanese books.
1 = What You Are Looking For Is In The Library
2 = Before We Forget Kindness
3 = The Full Moon Coffee Shop