A part-time housewife in her forties, struggling with her son's school refusal, discovers she can summon her late grandmother's spirit after using a facial cleanser sample at a beauty shop. As she immerses herself in cleaning routines, the silent presence of her grandmother accompanies her through a quiet reckoning with family wounds and buried memories. A story of everyday hardship wrapped in whimsy and gentle pathos.

Armed with baking soda, facial cleanser, and memories of her childhood home, a part-time housewife endures the winter.

Tadaoka, a man in his twenties living in Shinjuku, navigates life through multiple personas. By day he works as a regular employee at an IT firm; by night he performs as "Utacho" at a cross-dressing café in Shinjuku, while running an anonymous account on a dating app as "Taicho," drawing in straight men. Written in the vernacular of the internet, the novel follows one month leading up to the end of the rainy season as an elusive "I" relentlessly searches for identity in Reiwa-era Tokyo. Winner of the 40th Dazai Osamu Award.

The author's relentless precision in illuminating a formless 'I' through language is enough to make the reader feel unhinged. Nothing happens and yet the birth of this novel is itself an event.

Yanagida, a 44-year-old single man working at a massage parlor, finds himself cornered in a dead end despite having tried to live a decent life. In the stifling atmosphere of COVID-19-era Japan, worn down by unreasonable customers, vulgar coworkers, and conflicts with his aging mother, his pent-up rage finally erupts. This novel depicts with visceral immediacy the wanderings of a pure but awkward soul caught between life and death, feeling that everyone around him is a stranger. Winner of the 39th Dazai Osamu Award.

A middle-aged man who thought he was living right suddenly finds himself trapped — and his rage erupts in a society locked down by COVID-19.

Around a family in which something has taken up residence inside the father’s body, the novel follows a year in the lives of two sisters and their father. It is a Dazai Prize-winning work that portrays loss and care with quiet warmth.

Something lives inside the father’s body.

Winner of the 37th Dazai Osamu Prize, this novel follows Hikaru, who grew up in a care facility and has relied on a mother-child notebook as her only link to her mother. As she encounters traces of a mother who shares her name, she tries to confirm her own existence. It quietly explores the depth of loneliness and the urgency of reconnecting with someone.

The mother-child notebook that was her only connection pushes Hikaru out into the world.

Shibata, thirty-four, works for a cardboard-tube manufacturer, where she is assigned chores because she is a woman and treated inappropriately by her manager. After impulsively claiming to be pregnant, she begins living as a false expectant mother and, through people she meets at maternity aerobics, encounters the realities of pregnancy and loneliness.

After beginning to pose as pregnant, Shibata steps away from the emptiness of her workplace and confronts loneliness and the gaze of others surrounding pregnancy.

Having given up his dream of becoming a professional boxer, Chiaki works for a painting company and spends steady days learning the trade under his boss. When Kaga, a newcomer who graduated from an art vocational school, joins the company, Chiaki's unease toward the well-liked young man gradually grows.

Within the routine of a painting company, Chiaki's unease toward a newcomer begins to unsettle him.

Second-year middle-school student Momoka is unsettled by her relationships with a friend who has awakened to romance, her non-biological father, and a mother who seems to love someone else. While she is drawn to her classmate Sayo, her childhood friend Yuki reacts with unease. Interwoven with the story of Osaki, a home-economics teacher, this ensemble novel portrays the layered feelings and growth of its girls.

The hesitations and changes within Momoka and Osaki, two girls in different stages of life, intersect.

One morning, the narrator finds that his wife has withdrawn to the basement and is no longer beside him. With LINE as their only means of contact, his attempts to encounter her again bring lost bonds, the passion of their first meeting, and long-suppressed wounds to the surface.

Trying to meet his wife in the basement, the narrator confronts the couple's memories and dissonance in the dark.

Keita, a thirty-year-old security guard who spends his days gambling and drifting without purpose, receives a postcard from a grandfather he has never met saying that there is something to be passed on. Expecting an inheritance, he travels to a forgotten mining village covered with tropical plants. Through life with his grandfather and memories of the Pacific War, Keita's life begins to move.

A postcard from a grandfather he has never met leads Keita to a forgotten mining village.

Ena, twenty-five, is invited to a gathering of women from her former workplace and learns that her lover has had a daughter. As memories of their affair, family, and her bond with a close friend overlap, she confronts the isolation and difficulty of living that she has carried amid society's ideas of what is right.

After learning of her lover's daughter's birth, Ena confronts her past and her relationships.

Kon, an eighteen-year-old travelling abroad, is separated from her brother's girlfriend and deceived out of all her money at a cheap inn. Mistaken for a boy, she begins working at a trading company in a foreign settlement, falls in love with her senior colleague Anji, and tries to set out with him while crossing boundaries of language and gender.

Forced to live as a boy in a foreign land, Kon and Anji try to choose a journey together across boundaries where neither language nor gender is fixed.

Salima, an African refugee who has arrived in a rural Australian town, has been left by her husband and raises two sons while working at a meat-processing plant. Struggling even with literacy in her mother tongue, she begins studying English at a vocational school and meets Harinezumi, a Japanese woman who has moved to Australia. This is a story of women trying to reclaim language and dignity in a foreign land.

After beginning to study English in a foreign land, Salima meets Harinezumi, a Japanese woman.

Hinako lives at her father's poultry farm when Yamagishi appears, rubbing his swollen belly and saying that a child will be born. As the bantams grow restless, Hinako, who was raised in a cage for chicks, becomes gripped by anxiety as the boundary between the chickens' violence and herself begins to waver.

A man who appears at a poultry farm and the increasingly restless bantams unsettle Hinako's world.

On the day of an appointment, Shoko Hata waits for her lover Masaki, who is supposed to appear. As she recalls their relationship and events from the past, a sudden anxiety overtakes her. Through people who cannot meet, the novel portrays the uncertainty of existence in contemporary life.

The time spent waiting for someone she cannot meet awakens anxiety within Hata.

Amiko cares deeply for her family and classmates, but cannot communicate those feelings in the same way as those around her. As her mother's pregnancy and loss unsettle the family, the girl's innocent perspective reveals distance and loneliness among the people closest to her.

Through Amiko's direct affection for family and friends, misunderstandings and loneliness within everyday life come into view.

Miyako is transferred by his electric-power company to a dam management office, where he works alongside a huge dam and indolent colleagues. In days when doing nothing seems to be the job, he confronts the realities of disaster and safety and reconsiders his own life.

At a dam management office where doing nothing is the job, everyday life intersects with the presence of disaster.

Set in the daily life of a high-school girl who lives beside an ancient imperial tomb, this novel blends an ancient-history mystery with romantic comedy. Within familiar surroundings, imagination about history and the relationships of young people cross with lightness.

A mystery of ancient history and romance enter the daily life of a high-school girl living beside an imperial tomb.

A story about a person who accepts playing the tuba as a personal destiny. The image of breath moving from lungs into the instrument and then out into the world shapes a strong will toward music.

Breath passes through the tuba and is released into the world as sound.

A girl with no parents, lover, money, or place to belong is guided by the sound of shamisen toward a departure. A first-person voice in dialect vividly conveys a protagonist trying to move forward despite being hurt.

Guided by the sound of shamisen, a girl without a place to belong sets out on a journey.

With graduation near and a job already secured, Sayo Horigai moves between university, her part-time work, and her lodging through languid days. Among the time she spends with friends, she encounters violence and sorrow close to everyday life, along with a faint hope. This coming-of-age novel was published under a new title after winning the prize as Man-Eater.

Close to a languid student life, violence and sorrow appear, along with a faint hope.

A student at an art college makes a class project about the disused railway in his hometown. Memories of a girl killed by a train in childhood, photographs and tea gatherings, and his encounter with Raina, who has lost the tip of her index finger, intertwine as a hidden event from the past comes to light.

As a student begins work based on a disused railway, memories of his hometown and a past connected to fingers converge before him.

Tayutau Rosoku is a novel by Yuriko Asamiya. This entry is based on publicly available bibliographic and prize records and does not supply unverified plot or character details.

A guide to a prize-winning work with limited public documentation, identified by its title and author.

Strongly desiring to be bound in both mind and body, thirty-two-year-old Mio continues ambiguous relationships with two men. This novel follows where her heart leads amid a daily life marked by loneliness and isolation.

Living with loneliness, Mio seeks to be bound in mind and body.

A Drop of Storm is the novel for which Koriku Kojima won the 17th Dazai Osamu Prize. It was published as a book with the same title after receiving the award.

The novel by Koriku Kojima that won the 17th Dazai Osamu Prize.

Takiko-chan: For a Night of One Shooting Star by Tomotaka Tsujiuchi is a story about holding on to dreams when young people's futures do not unfold as planned. Through a gently observant voice, it portrays what remains beyond wounded time.

After a future has shattered, it searches for a small light that makes it possible to keep dreaming.

Densha Gokko Teisen is a novel by Takehisa Fukumoto. This entry is based on publicly available bibliographic and prize records and does not supply unverified plot or character details.

A guide to a prize-winning work with limited public documentation, identified by its title and author.

After graduating from high school, a young man throws himself into day labor and intense aikido practice, pushing his body to its limits. This coming-of-age novel depicts a young person seeking the strength to live while confronting death, in a spare style.

Pushing his body to its limits, a young man searches for the strength to live.

Kiichi lives with his mother and sister on a boat floating on the Tosabori River, where he meets Nobuo, a second-grade boy. Set in a riverside town, the story portrays their brief friendship and the harshness of an adult world the children cannot yet fully understand.

Meeting a boy who lives on a boat afloat on the river changes Nobuo's summer into one he cannot forget.

A work of fiction by Yamaguchi Izumi, selected as an outstanding work of the Dazai Osamu Prize.

A work of fiction known as an early work by Yamaguchi Izumi.

Echigo Goze Uta: Winter Journey is the title story for which Fujiko Murayama won the 12th Dazai Osamu Prize. A story about goze, the blind women musicians of Echigo, it was included in a book of the same title published by Chikuma Shobo in 1977.

A story about the blind women musicians of Echigo that won the 12th Dazai Osamu Prize.

Personal Report is a novel by Suishimon Tanaka selected as an excellent work in the 12th Dazai Osamu Prize.

A novel by Suishimon Tanaka selected as an excellent work in the 12th Dazai Osamu Prize.

Hana Sute is a novel by Kyoko Fuji. Publicly available bibliographic and prize records provide little detailed introduction to its contents, so this entry avoids conjecture.

A guide to tracing a work with limited public documentation through its title and author.

This collection of stories is set in an institution for children with disabilities and portrays the conflicts faced by those around a child with profound disabilities. Through questions about the value of life and euthanasia, the title story examines relationships between those who give care and those who receive it.

Faced with the weight of life itself, the doubts and questions of those connected to the institution intersect.

"ついの栖" is a prize-winning work first presented in this award context.

Tracing the work's publication history through "ついの栖".

"櫂" is a prize-winning work first presented in this award context.

Tracing the work's publication history through "櫂".

A novel published by Chikuma Shobo as an award-winning work, recorded as the winner of the 7th Dazai Osamu Prize.

Winner of the 7th Dazai Osamu Prize.

Behind Time is the title story for which Masayuki Kaido won the 6th Dazai Osamu Prize. It was announced as the winning work in 1970 and was later included in a book of the same title.

The title story by Masayuki Kaido that won the 6th Dazai Osamu Prize.

Drawn to the drowning of Taira no Kiyotsune as told in The Tale of the Heike, the narrator begins tracing the little-known courtier's footsteps and legends. Reflections on Kiyotsune's death overlap with memories of evacuation to Tango, student life in Kyoto, and dreams, bringing the historical figure into contact with the narrator's present-day sensibility.

A journey tracing Taira no Kiyotsune's drowning reconnects history and the present, memory and dreams, within a single sensibility.

Minoru travels from Tokyo to Okinoerabu Island, where he remembers his mother, who died thirty years earlier, and seeks to honor her spirit. Through the island's natural landscape and memories of the past, this autobiographical novel portrays the love between mother and child, loss, and attachment to one's homeland.

Amid the natural landscape of Okinoerabu Island, Minoru follows the memories of his late mother.

This work is recorded as a shortlisted candidate for the 3rd Dazai Osamu Prize, not as the winning work.

Boredom and helplessness grow in the ordinary days of a group of young people, who are drawn to a casually spoken word, death, and head for the sea in northern Japan. The title story portrays their loneliness and impulse toward death through an apparently motiveless plan for collective suicide, in a detached and poetic style.

Drawn by the word death, a group of young people heads for the sea in northern Japan.

This work is recorded as a shortlisted candidate for the 2nd Dazai Osamu Prize, not as the winning work.

No work won the 1st Dazai Osamu Prize; this work is recorded as a shortlisted candidate.

No work won the 1st Dazai Osamu Prize; this work is recorded as a shortlisted candidate.