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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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".