The story follows Atono, an elderly woman living alone in Hiroshima, who carries memories of her mother, a dementia patient who disappeared without a trace. Through her days with a neighborhood walking group and nights caring for a friend, an eerie rumor spreads about a woman in a red vest. The novella cultivates a sense of unease through collective psychological tension among the elderly and the unreliable narration of its protagonist, artfully rendered in Hiroshima dialect.

She says there is a woman in a red vest at the house -- an unverifiable rumor circulating in the walking group casts an unsettling air over the town.

Xing Yao, a high school girl born in Hong Kong and raised in Japan by immigrant foster parents, struggles with questions about her identity: Is she Hongkonese? Chinese? Japanese? What is a homeland? What is a mother tongue? What is family? What are her feelings for her best friend? A raw and radiant debut novel by an 18-year-old author, racing through the tremors of identity at full speed.

"What am I, really," she thinks, wiping her reddened legs with a tissue, tears and words spilling out, impossible to stop.

When three coworkers in the same department begin a string of absences, the narrator finds her frustration mounting as her own workload grows. One day she is let in on their love triangle by Shimomura, a capable senior colleague who has been abandoned by her fiancé. Drawn into the orbit of Shimomura's inscrutable "dance"—impossible to read as grief or defiance—the narrator is forced to confront the opaque, inviolable interior of another person. A prize-winning debut novel set in the uneasy terrain of the Japanese workplace.

Today is the day I slap them both. An Akutagawa Prize-nominated debut that renders the murky disquiet of the modern workplace.

A graduate student of architecture who works part-time in male escort services moves from Tokyo to Amami Oshima and works as a tour guide, drawing on the island's dialect, folk songs, and a multilingual atmosphere of Japanese, English, and Chinese. The title is drawn from an essay by Shimao Toshio, and the work is praised for its unique, sensual prose that evokes the island's pervasive loneliness.

I walk down from my room to the sea. It begins just 345 steps from my front door.

Keiichi Hayami, a second-year high school student in the art club, is captivated by the beauty of his classmate Tsukasa Hojo and begins painting his portrait. As the two grow closer, an event during summer vacation shatters Keiichi, leaving his longing for beauty and teenage despair in turmoil.

A portrait painted by a boy drawn to beauty unsettles the boundary between friendship and love.

Set in present-day Setagaya, Tokyo, this story follows Arichai, a woman raised as a shaman in South America by her mother, a tribal chief, as she begins to question her own origins. Through her encounter with a man known as the Bomb Man by a riverbank, another realm crossing the boundaries of spirits, humans, and animals appears within an everyday city.

Crossing the boundaries of spirits, humans, and animals, a magical otherworld appears in the heart of Tokyo.

Set in 2052 Japan, this near-future novel portrays a society in which language, nationality, love, and politics are all in flux. No standalone book publication has been confirmed.

A near-future novel that throws the present into relief from a Japan thirty years ahead.

Set in present-day Hokkaido, the story follows Kyoko through the memories of a family spanning three, and including her great-grandmother, four generations. A carved wooden bear becomes a point of contact between humans and animals, blood and adoptive ties, and the time inscribed in northern land.

A story that follows family memory and the time of northern land through a carved wooden bear.

This novella observes a family changing over several decades through multiple perspectives, with a father and son at its center. As narrators and relationships shift, memories emerge of happy times, a life fading away, and farewells that cannot be put into words.

A family portrait rendered through multiple perspectives, tracing happy time between parent and child and the light of a life fading away.

Around an incident, even people with no direct connection to it begin to speak with certainty about what happened behind the scenes. Through a narrator who meets figures thought to be central to the event, this Shincho Newcomer Award-winning story traces an unsettling process in which hearsay and memory reshape reality.

Everyone spoke with certainty about what lay behind the incident, and some even let slip that they had been involved.

Koki, a care worker at a general hospital in Osaka, grows increasingly frustrated amid harsh work and a lonely life. When an elderly patient recalls a snake eating its own tail in wartime Manchuria, the violence latent in care work intersects with the movements of a mind that consumes itself.

A young man's troubled spirit in a care setting awakens an elderly patient's memories of war.

Told through the eyes of young Nanako, the story follows a proposed marriage within a family in southern Osaka. As relatives' calculations and concern for appearances collide, it brings into view people bound by house and blood ties, voiced in the language of Kawachi.

Nanako watches the calculations of her relatives as they circle around a proposed marriage.

This novel follows a young man living on a farm in Miyagi Prefecture as he carries the memory of confinement he endured as a boy and lives through days stagnant like a marsh. It vividly portrays the confinement of rural life and the moment when long-suppressed violence erupts.

Frustration stagnates at the bottom of a marsh, then violence erupts, illuminating the lives of oppressed young people.

In Chennai, South India, a Japanese-language teacher sets out on a short journey across a river swollen by a once-in-a-century flood. Along the way, the narrator encounters surreal events bound up with mud and memory in this story of foreign everyday life and loss.

The mud of a hundred years had swallowed everything.

Classroom conversation and internet-inflected banter reveal the futility of words and the stirrings of desire. As a junior-high-school boy keeps directing excessive language at a girl who barely replies, the story turns his own gaze and self-absorption back upon him.

Included with a companion story that coolly portrays a public uproar in an age when belief alone is treated as truth.

Set on an island fishing village in Nagasaki, the story follows four generations of one family through the voices of women. Voices rising from fraying consciousness and fragments of memory shared by relatives are woven together into a narrative of the land and its people across time.

A family story that stitches together memories held by people and place through spoken voices.

Eriko is bound to caring for her father-in-law, while Himari carries resentment toward her parents and classmates. The two women, each burdened by a troubled inner life, meet and grow closer during a small summer journey.

A woman bound by caregiving and an angry girl begin their pilgrimage.

In this war novel, a private wounded on a southern island during the Pacific War is forced to evacuate a temporary field hospital. Through an extreme march in which even the boundary between friend and foe blurs, it portrays the madness and sorrow of soldiers abandoned by the battlefield.

"This is war," he muttered as he walked.

Events involving people in Shinjuku, an African baby factory, a Paris flea market, and a lakeside in India converge. Having achieved immortality at the end of their relentless desire, humanity moves toward an alchemy that makes gold from the sun, carrying civilization into dangerous territory.

Humanity's desire, after attaining immortality, turns toward an alchemy that draws even the sun into its reach.

Seventeen-year-old Akaiko leaves her mother during a trip through Singapore and Malaysia and takes refuge at a friend's seaside villa. Her flight from the fear of food accumulating inside her body explores urgent feelings about appetite and the body.

To escape the food of everyday life, a girl slips away from her mother in the middle of a journey.

Uncanny bodily changes, including a childhood friend's tapeworm and an animal-like presence in a lover's eye, expose the unease in human relationships. This Shincho Newcomer Award-winning story uses vivid imagination to cast adolescence in a grotesque light.

A tapeworm in a childhood friend's gut. A beast in a lover's eye. A startling new talent arrives.

Set in Akitsu, a residential neighborhood along the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, this story follows a garden and its surrounding streets as they transform to the sound of unfamiliar music. Shifting among the perspectives of four men and women, it portrays the moment when a new landscape emerges from an ordinary place.

Unfamiliar music rings through an ordinary residential neighborhood, revealing the power of place to transform the world.

Set inside a vast factory, this striking debut follows people engaged in strange tasks, from destroying documents to planting rooftop gardens, and portrays the absurdity of work and life. It won both the Shincho Newcomer Award and the Oda Sakunosuke Prize.

A gigantic factory that makes no one knows what, with mysterious animals living on its grounds.

A river carries away the living, a strange bird inhabits a white mountain of books, and the world seems close to bursting. In landscapes where the boundary between reality and imagination trembles, people seek freedom while confronting the distance between themselves and others.

A novel that asks where people go when the boundaries of the world begin to unravel.

A roofer working on construction sites is drawn into strange presences associated with gods and a series of absurd events. This Shincho Newcomer Award-winning story scatters fragments of religiosity through an everyday workplace.

The strangeness of a world crowded with gods.

An elder brother lives in darkness behind blackout curtains, while his younger brother hopes to become a stage lighting designer. Their contrasting lives reveal a fraught relationship divided by light and darkness.

A story of the distance between a brother who rejects light and another who wants to make it his work.

Ama Chi Amanohito, a strikingly handsome young man from Iwate, moves to Tokyo and begins writing poetry for people on the streets. He joins the literary coterie magazine Hametsuha, where his growing commitment to its eccentric members is complicated by his feelings for the leader's partner and the group's worsening financial strain.

A coming-of-age novel set around a real online literary magazine, tracing creative fervor and tangled relationships.

This work of literary criticism moves beyond the image of Kenji Miyazawa as an absolute pacifist to examine the violence within his writing and its self-destructive ethics. Tracing questions of modern literature and criticism, it seeks a mode of thought that leads violence toward a horizon of nonviolence.

How did the violence latent in a poet of absolute peace reach a horizon of nonviolence?

Izumi Tsurumaki finds herself at a place like a mountain-pass teahouse without knowing why she is there. As she eats dumplings, unfamiliar old women appear and urge her toward a place beyond the mist where she can rest. The short story begins in an unsettling and ambiguous setting.

Unfamiliar old women invite Izumi toward a place beyond the mist.

A boy made the target of brutal bullying as a sacrifice for his classmates confronts the dark side of survival through his own logic. This novella coolly portrays a confined classroom and memories of violence.

Targeted by bullying, a boy looks into the dark side of survival through his own logic.

Asked by a friend, the narrator records the friend's suicide on digital video and edits the footage. As news of the suicide and the video's existence spreads, the narrator struggles with whether to deliver it to the dead friend's parents.

A story about whether to deliver footage of a friend's suicide to the bereaved family.

As undelivered flyers form layers in the narrator's room, the narrator tries to complete a private fairy tale. Writing in a diary reveals that even a few days of reality have not been adequately reproduced, and a space different from reality begins to emerge.

Through piled-up flyers and a diary, reality transforms into another space.

Morning of Livestock is a short story by Daisuke Asao. It is included in his first story collection, Blue Sheet.

A short story included in the first collection Blue Sheet.

Centered on a narrator who works slaughtering and processing cattle and pigs, the novel follows why he continues in that job while sharing a life with his working wife and young son. It examines a concrete workplace alongside the choices involved in supporting a family and making a living.

A slaughterhouse worker connects his job with the life of his family.

A work of literary criticism on Yoshirō Ishihara's experience of the Soviet labor camps and communism in his thought. It reads Ishihara's ideas not as communitarianism, but as practices of communication and exchange.

Using Yoshirō Ishihara's labor-camp experience as a starting point, it examines communism and responsibility.

A family that welcomes Claire, a foreign bride, experiences both buoyant happiness and tragedy. The story portrays what obstructs the wish of people from different backgrounds to live together.

Through the happiness and tragedy of a family welcoming a foreign bride, the desire and difficulty of living together come into view.

A work of criticism by Sakai Takayuki on Yukio Mishima and the youth of modern Japan. Submitted under the title "Kake, Machi, Ketchaku su," it was retitled for publication as the prize-winning work.

A work of criticism on Yukio Mishima and the youth of modern Japan.

Bottomless is a short story by Susumu Aogaki, published in Shincho, the literary magazine that announces the Shincho Newcomer Award.

A short story published in the literary magazine Shincho.

An award-winning short work later collected in Dynamite Binbo. It leaves behind a sense of wish, setback, and renewed attempt.

An origin piece that leads into the later collection.

A woman from France known as "Supernova" searches for a key to life's most important mystery. As she finds an answer to the world's mysteries in the curved beauty of a mammoth tusk, the writer-narrator is drawn to her.

A woman seeks a key to the mysteries of life and the world in the curve of a mammoth tusk.

This short story was published as the winning work of the 27th Shincho New Writers Award. No standalone book edition has been confirmed.

A short story by Fuyukawa Wataru that won the Shincho New Writers Award.

This short story is recorded as the winning work of the 25th Shincho New Writers Award. No standalone book edition has been confirmed.

A work preserved in its original magazine publication.

A short story by Koguchi Masaaki. It received the 23rd Shinchō Newcomer Award and was published in the literary magazine Shinchō.

A short story by Koguchi Masaaki that received the 23rd Shinchō Newcomer Award.

Set in Okinawa, this story follows an arranged marriage involving a woman in debt and a young man with intellectual disabilities, while drawing out family feeling and social scrutiny. Its restrained narration holds urgency and warmth together.

As she hesitates and faces the other family, the woman gradually encounters an unexpected kindness.

Dog Days is a short story by Kazunori Fujieda, published in the November 1990 issue of the literary magazine Shincho.

A short story published in the November 1990 issue of Shincho.

The novel depicts the everyday life of a lively wife, Karin-chan, and a security guard in a highly energetic, provocative style. It is remembered as the winner of the 21st Shincho Newcomer Award.

The lively Karin-chan and a security guard share a funny, provocative everyday life.

A short story collection set in wartime Shikoku that layers a boy’s days with the vivid image of a kingfisher. In addition to the title story, it includes another piece about a childhood friend’s fierce life, leaving a sense of loss and renewal.

The kingfisher is a flying jewel.

An award-winning story about a woman in Southern California who, through a thirteen-year return to New York, confronts the distance from family.

Distance within family and cultural dislocation quietly build up.

A Shincho Prize-winning work with the atmosphere of young deaths and fleeting life.

The presence of the dead lingers throughout the piece.

An early work that portrays the shifting feelings of boys and girls against the backdrop of a seaside hometown and strained human relationships. It was later included in Summer Memories.

An early work that traces the shifting feelings of boys and girls against a seaside hometown and strained human relationships.

An early novel published as a Shincho Newcomer Award winner. True to its foreign place-name title, it follows a sense slightly removed from everyday life.

A prize-winning work that follows a feeling slightly removed from everyday life, as suggested by its foreign place-name title.

An early award-winning piece by 小磯良子, with no confirmed standalone book edition.

An early award-winning piece by 小磯良子.

Published as an award-winning early work by 加藤幸子.

An early award-winning work by 加藤幸子.

An early award-winning piece by 川勝篤, with no confirmed standalone book edition.

An early award-winning piece by 川勝篤.

An early award-winning piece by 小田泰正, with no confirmed standalone book edition.

An early award-winning piece by 小田泰正.

Published as a winning work in Shincho, this short piece quietly depicts the unease of standing at the threshold of twenty and the tension contained in the morning. It leaves behind the lingering sense of a future and self that have yet to take shape.

The morning of twenty lies between expectation and uncertainty.

Published in Shincho as a winning short piece, it quietly portrays the uncertainty at a young narrator’s point of departure and the feeling of moving away from family and place. Rather than major events, it leaves behind the emotional tremor that comes before setting out.

My departure begins before there is any answer.

No work won the 11th Shincho Newcomer Prize; this work is listed as an honourable mention among the candidates.

No work won the 11th Shincho Newcomer Prize; this work is listed as an honourable mention among the candidates.

No work won the 11th Shincho Newcomer Prize; this work is listed as an honourable mention among the candidates.

No work won the 10th Shincho Newcomer Prize; this work is listed as an honourable mention among the candidates.

No work won the 10th Shincho Newcomer Prize; this work is listed as an honourable mention among the candidates.

A novel set in a village isolated from the outside world, where old traditions and customs remain. Through a festival in which the village children gather kaya nuts in the forest, their rank within the community is determined by how many they collect.

A festival of gathering kaya nuts shapes the order of an enclosed village and the fate of its children.

"流蜜のとき" is a prize-winning work first presented in this award context.

Tracing the work's publication history through "流蜜のとき".

"剥製博物館" is a prize-winning work first presented in this award context.

Tracing the work's publication history through "剥製博物館".

Magic is a short story by Michiko Yamamoto. It is collected in Betty's Garden alongside the title story and the stories Rain Chair, The Old Man's Duck, and The Selfish Ghost.

An early short story by Michiko Yamamoto, collected in Betty's Garden.

A short story by Suyama Shizuo, later collected in the short-fiction and essay volume Koshini Obishite, Otokorashiku Seyo.

An early short story by Suyama Shizuo that received the 3rd Shinchō Newcomer Award.

A contemporary story that satirically portrays a mother intensely devoted to her child's education. Against the values surrounding home and education, it observes her wishes and the tensions they create.

A satirical portrayal of a family's atmosphere around a mother devoted to education.