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August 13, 2026
 

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AKUTAGAWA PRIZE

Kasumi Asakura (left) and Chito Kosagawa won the 175th Naoki and Akutagawa Prizes, respectively, for their novels ¡°Kengwai¡± and ¡°Zonbi Kaishufu.¡±
CULTURE / Books
Jul 15, 2026
Chito Kosagawa and Kasumi Asakura win Â鶹´«Ã½ top literary prizes
Tech-dystopian fiction and a historical novel claimed Â鶹´«Ã½ highest literary honors on Wednesday.
From left: Naoki Prize winner Teru Shimazu and Akutagawa Prize winners Ushio Hatakeyama and Makoto Toriyama pose for a photo at a press conference in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Jan. 14.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 14, 2026
Time and history win big at most prestigious Japanese book awards
The Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize in January 2026 were awarded to Makoto Toriyama, Ushio Hatakeyama and Teru Shimazu.
¡°Jackson Alone¡± follows four mixed-race, queer young men as they navigate the fallout after a revenge porn video surfaces at the titular character¡¯s place of work.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 7, 2026
Part seedy, part satire, all bite: ¡®Jackson Alone¡¯ tackles issues others rarely touch
The dark satire novella ¡°Jackson Alone¡± is the first book by Akutagawa Prize-winning author Jose Ando to be translated into English.
Japanese literature in translation abroad has only grown in popularity with every year, resulting in a wide variety of titles available in English, from cozy fiction to crime and horror.
CULTURE / Books / 2025 IN REVIEW
Dec 14, 2025
In 2025, Japanese literature took a turn for the weird
As expected, women writers raked in successes and cozy cat fiction kept its popularity, with two big surprises from male authors ¡ª Uketsu and Osamu Dazai.
¡°Sympathy Tower Tokyo¡± is centered around Sara Machina, a star architect designing a new experimental prison in central Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 30, 2025
ChatGPT controversy is the least interesting part of ¡®Sympathy Tower Tokyo¡¯
In Rie Qudan¡¯s futuristic Tokyo, AI and architects take on the prison system.
A board announces that no works were awarded the Akutagawa and Naoki literary prizes on Wednesday evening in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2025
Akutagawa and Naoki award decision marks rare absence of literary prizewinners
Selection committee members were disappointed by the lack of a majority vote in the second round, insisting that the nominated works moved many readers and were worth reading.
After last year¡¯s controversy over using AI to write about 5% of her novel, Rie Qudan was asked by an advertising magazine to write a short story where she uses AI for 95% of it. The resulting short story, ¡°Kage no ame¡± (¡°Rain Shadow¡±), was published March 25. ?
CULTURE / Books
May 24, 2025
AI fiction is already here. Are humans ready?
Last year, Rie Qudan faced controversy after admitting that chatGPT wrote 5% of her novel. Now she¡¯s published a story she only wrote 5% herself, leaving 95% to AI.
Since 2017, Kotomi Li has won some of Â鶹´«Ã½ top literary awards and built a formidable career in the face of persistent online harassment. ¡°Authors are tenacious creatures to begin with,¡± she says.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
May 5, 2025
Kotomi Li: ¡®I refuse to choose death¡¯
The Taiwanese writer reflects on the importance of queer community, her ascent in Â鶹´«Ã½ literary world and her ongoing battles against online harassment.
¡°The Place of Shells¡± takes place mostly in Gottingen, Germany, where both the author and the book's narrator live, while also jumping both geographically and temporally to Sendai, Japan, through memories of the 3/11 disaster and its aftermath.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2025
Grief ebbs and flows between two tragedies in ¡®The Place of Shells¡¯
Mai Ishizawa¡¯s debut novel, which won one of the three Akutagawa Prizes awarded in 2021, is also her first to be released in English, translated by Polly Barton.
¡°May You Have Delicious Meals¡± focuses on a trio of young office workers at the same workplace who have mixed feelings for food and each other.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 8, 2025
¡®May You Have Delicious Meals¡¯: The ugly taste of office and gender politics
The English-language debut of Junko Takase¡¯s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel serves complex prose in translation by Morgan Giles.
Jose Ando purposefully wrote his Akutagawa Prize-winning novel ¡°Dtopia¡± to be accessible to an audience beyond Japan and to spark conversations about race, gender and the effects of modern entertainment.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 27, 2025
Jose Ando¡¯s rapid rise from first pages to the Akutagawa Prize
Just three years after dedicating himself to writing, the author won Â鶹´«Ã½ top literary award for his novel ¡°Dtopia,¡± which offers a fresh perspective on identity and diversity.
Akutagawa Prize winners (from left) Jose Ando, author of "Dtopia" and Yui Suzuki, author of "Goethe wa Subete o Itta," and Naoki Prize winner Shin Iyohara, author of "Ai o Tsugu Umi."
CULTURE / Books
Jan 15, 2025
Â鶹´«Ã½ most prestigious literary awards go to a trio of contemporary voices
Jose Ando and Yui Suzuki take home Akutagawa honors, while Shin Iyohara nabs the Naoki Prize.
Sanzo K. Matsunaga¡¯s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel ¡°Bari Sanko¡± centers on two men involved in an office hiking club. One is into dangerous off-path trekking, the other is more of a by-the-book conformist.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 19, 2024
Akutagawa winner ¡®Bari Sanko¡¯ takes office politics to the mountains
Though the plot takes time to get going, Sanzo K. Matsunaga¡¯s novel takes a nuanced look at the implications of being an independent thinker in Â鶹´«Ã½ corporate culture.
From left: Kan Kikuchi, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Muto Chozo and Nagami Tokutaro
LIFE / Language
Jul 19, 2024
Dive into Akutagawa¡¯s world of creepy ¡®kappa¡¯ and prewar kanji
In order to read Japanese works written before the war, you¡¯ll need to watch out for the different roles hiragana play in addition to unfamiliar kanji.
Naoki Prize winner Michi Ichiho (left), and Akutagawa Prize winners Sanzo K. Matsunaga (center) and Aki Asahina pose with their award-winning books at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2024
Three novelists named for Akutagawa and Naoki awards
Authors Sanzo K. Matsunaga and Aki Asahina won the Akutagawa Prize for literary writers, while the Naoki Prize for genre fiction went to Michi Ichiho.
Rie Qudan speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday after being awarded the Akutagawa Prize.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 19, 2024
Akutagawa Prize draws controversy after win for work that used ChatGPT
Rie Qudan won Â鶹´«Ã½ most important prize for early career writers for ¡°Tokyo-to Dojo-to,¡± a novel that ¡°exposes the prophecy of the AI generation.¡±
CULTURE / Books
Sep 2, 2023
Saou Ichikawa¡¯s ¡®Hunchback¡¯: A darkly funny portrait of disability
The winner of the second 2023 Akutagawa Prize is a sardonic commentary on the utility of bodies, both abled and disabled.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 17, 2023
Could the Akutagawa Prize get its first American winner?
Gregory Khezrnejat, whose short story ¡°Kaikonchi¡± is up for the literary award, sees writing in Japanese as a minor rebellion against English¡¯s assumed dominance in global culture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 3, 2022
Junko Takase¡¯s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel is a feminist¡¯s nightmare
¡°Oishii Gohan ga Taberaremasu Yoni¡± reads at first like a work place drama but ultimately makes a sinister argument about contemporary feminism.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 19, 2022
Li Kotomi¡¯s ¡®Solo Dance¡¯ flows across prose and borders
A beautiful translation by Arthur Reiji Morris of ¡®Solo Dance¡¯ will solidify Li Kotomi¡¯s place in the next generation of Japanese writers.
Gut bacteria may be behind many of Â鶹´«Ã½ colorectal cancer cases
A Japanese research team found that a toxin produced by certain E. coli strains, colibactin, caused genetic mutations in nearly half of colorectal cancer cases studied
¡®Total whiplash¡¯: Foreign residents react to Â鶹´«Ã½ changing permanent residency rules
The entrance to the Tokyo Immigration Bureau in Minato Ward, Tokyo, in March. For some foreign residents of Japan, tightening measures for permanent residency have become one factor in a broader calculation over whether remaining in the country makes financial sense over the long term.
She is Russia¡¯s richest woman. Her business empire is going up in flames.
Tatyana Kim, the head and co-founder of Wildberries, speaks about Ukrainian drone attacks on the company's warehouses in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, at an unidentified location, in this still image from a handout video released on July 31.
Severe tropical storm Chan-hom makes landfall near Tokyo
Severe Tropical Storm Chan-hom made landfall around Ibaraki Prefecture, near Tokyo, on Tuesday night.
What Â鶹´«Ã½ language rules for permanent residency should look like
Potential health care workers hoping to find work in Japan take Japanese language instruction in Jakarta. Not all applicants for permanent residency should be expected to reach this level of proficiency.
Forty-five meters down, a diver races to record a fleeting moment of WWII history
Kingo Wakasa photographs the kamikaze plane wing section he discovered at the USS Emmons wreck site.
Ikarigata closer to emulating older brother Fujinokawa than many think
The future Fujinokawa (third from left) and Ikarigata (right) compete against each other at ages 5 and 3, respectively.
Where do foreign residents in Japan want to die?
The Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery is one of the few cemeteries in Japan that allows burials, albeit with conditions for the deceased, including foreign nationality and permanent residency in Kanagawa Prefecture.
¡®Total whiplash¡¯: Foreign residents react to Â鶹´«Ã½ changing permanent residency rules
The entrance to the Tokyo Immigration Bureau in Minato Ward, Tokyo, in March. For some foreign residents of Japan, tightening measures for permanent residency have become one factor in a broader calculation over whether remaining in the country makes financial sense over the long term.
As Â鶹´«Ã½ concrete jungles sizzle, urban forestry offers an all-natural fix
People and birds find relief from the sun in Tokyo's Nakano Ward earlier this month. While experts agree that urban greening is crucial to mitigating the impact of climate change, trees are becoming even more scarce in Japanese cities.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo¡¯s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo¡¯s ¡®stadium of desire¡¯

Longform

Disaster relief workers Taichi Kato (left) and Seiji Yoshimura enter the collapsed living quarters at Kyuganji temple in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture.
What Kumamoto revealed about Â鶹´«Ã½ earthquake readiness
By Alex K.T. Martin

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