Winner of the 38th Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award. Fourth-grader Yoshizawa Yuchi has been revered by followers of the religious organization Ogido Sorukai as the Descent Child, the reincarnation of its founding father. Strictly controlled by her mother, a sect official, in what she can eat and who she can touch, Yuchi has begun to feel resistance against the devotion of the faithful and the daily rituals imposed upon her. Then transfer student Watarai Kumi appears, a girl who has changed schools many times due to family circumstances. One day, a chance encounter in the school bathroom brings them together, and the two girls gradually grow closer. A sisterhood novel about two girls navigating lives constrained by adults, finding hope in each other.

Happiness does not continue forever in the same form, and even if it disappears, it does not vanish completely. It surely remains somewhere in the heart, changed in shape.

Winner of the 37th Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award. Thirteen-year-old Sofia lives in Cherry Town, a foggy fictional town, under the oppressive grip of her abusive father Stanley who runs a bar. One summer, a mysterious girl who calls herself Natalie Clover and claims to "be reborn every week" arrives next door. With memory that resets each week, Natalie and Sofia repeatedly become friends anew while mapping the town together. Through this, Sofia slowly awakens to a wish she has long suppressed. A timeless summer story of two lonely souls finding each other.

A timeless coming-of-age story of two lonely souls, dazzling and evergreen.

Retitled The Other Side of a Proper Map for publication, the novel follows Koichiro, a young man living with his unemployed father, as he runs away and confronts the question of how to live his own life.

Wagasatsumon is a historical novel set in Edo, in which Kiryu, a palanquin bearer for daimyo and hatamoto households, seeks to rebuild his life after losing his work.

Kiryu, a palanquin bearer for daimyo and hatamoto households, tries to begin again in Edo after losing his livelihood.

Set in wartime Xiamen, China, it follows Lily, who works as a café waitress and spy, and the female sniper Yanghua, tracing espionage, love, and conflict.

In wartime Xiamen, two women’s love and conflict are set in motion.

A marine adventure novel centered on communication between orcas and humans, and the ties that connect life.

Guided by the voice of the sea, the mission turns into a story of bonds.

A coming-of-age novel about a boy who becomes a yobidashi apprentice in a sumo stable and grows through the work and relationships around him.

The voice of the ring slowly gives the boy a place to belong.

A fantasy tale in which the mythical creature shamonuma leads people to heaven, and a woman finds renewal amid an island death ritual and family tensions.

"We have come to take you." The shamonuma appears before Yuu.

A historical romance about Minamoto no Sanetomo and the princess Nobuko, set amid Kamakura-era power struggles.

A wish to govern through the power of poetry is shaken by the violence of the age.

An Osaka noir in which an unemployed man addicted to pachinko is pulled into the underworld and into love.

Love and violence entwine in the dark.

A novel in which a temp worker reconsiders his own life and that of a woman his age through a diary.

Tenryuin Akiko’s diary shakes the man’s everyday life.

An ensemble novel that portrays longing for the universe and the pains of youth through encounters and reunions at a science museum.

Looking up at the stars binds people together again.

A revenge story about a girl attacked by a random assailant who becomes obsessed with finding the culprit through a strange phrase left behind.

Following a strange phrase, the girl runs toward revenge.

A contemporary novel about a woman who begins life in Kyoto and faces the mismatch between words and her past emotions.

The mismatch between words and feelings aches in Kyoto’s air.

A historical youth novel in which the summer of Hiroshima and a butterfly preserved in a specimen box awaken a lost love.

A love trapped in August returns with a butterfly.

A story in which childhood friends are drawn into a large-scale scheme colored by tricks and lies.

In a single day, the world can change.

A novel that portrays the darkness in the hearts of isolated girls in a winter town, steeped in a sense of suffocation.

In a white town, the girls’ darkness quietly deepens.

A youth novel in which a young man who has failed in the shogi world reconsiders his own dream while teaching a blond, blue-eyed girl the game.

Shogi changes the distance and the future between two people.

A contemporary novel about a young man reassessing life and relationships at a roadside family restaurant after being demoted and sent home.

At a family restaurant in his hometown, a 25-year-old starts over.

A story about an actress who makes a living as a stand-in and finds her routine shaken after meeting a suspicious young man.

Another would-be apprentice appears in her life of substitutions.

A youth ensemble novel that traces the ripples in a high school when the volleyball club captain suddenly quits.

The world wobbles the moment Kirishima quits.

A coming-of-age novel about a girl who moves to a new town after her mother remarries and the quiet distance between her and a postal worker.

In a new town, the girl finds a secret refuge.

A fantastical story in which beautiful siblings on an isolated island confront their fate tied to a lightning-fish legend.

An island legend tears the siblings’ fate apart.

A period action novel in which a mercenary band roams the battlefields of late Muromachi Japan and gets dragged into a succession struggle.

The mercenaries’ blades fan the flames of a succession struggle.

A historical entertainment novel in which performers of the Azuchi-Momoyama period form a troupe and race through power struggles and performance.

Art and life collide in the heat of the Sengoku era.

Winner of the 19th Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award. The novel centers on Yukihiko, a middle school boy who can no longer play basketball after being pushed off a cliff by a friend, and follows the arrival of a strange science-minded boy, an occult-leaning girl, and the sense of unseen beings as the world around him slowly changes. It is a large-scale coming-of-age novel where ordinary wounds and uncanny events overlap.

Amid confusion and sorrow, the world is gradually wrapped in a strange kind of tenderness.

Winner of the 18th Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award. Centered on a brother and sister living apart after their parents divorce, the novel follows the perfectionist older sister Sono, her younger brother Yuki who is physically frail and emotionally guarded, their separate romances, and the days surrounding their bedridden dog Haru. It is a coming-of-age story that carefully traces family distance and the subtle shifts of the heart.

With their bedridden dog Haru at the center, the distance between the siblings gradually begins to change.

An allegorical novel where war begins with the neighboring town, yet no gunshots or blood are seen, exposing the madness of war as it infiltrates daily life.

An invisible war quietly invades the town.

A youth novel about a fledgling female manzai duo moving forward through laughter and setbacks.

They fall while laughing, and keep going anyway.

A youth novel in which a high school boy who meets a girl at a movie theater tries to uncover the truth through her diary of depression.

A summer of transparent pain rises out of a diary.

A youth sports novel in which a young jockey takes on the big stage of the Tenno Sho while dealing with love and conflict.

The jockey keeps racing toward glory.

A sports novel about a pitcher with Olympic experience who returns to the major leagues eight years after giving up on his dream.

Eight years later, he returns to the stage of his dream.

A youth novel in which a rakugo apprentice, an indie film director, a struggling actor, and a trainee writer change their fates after finding a real handgun.

One handgun sets four young people’s futures in motion.

Hashiru Jiisan is a novel by Yo Ikenaga about Sakutsugu, a 69-year-old man, and the ordinary life and unsettled desires of old age. Through his strange connection with a monkey that appears above his head, the story brings solitude, attachment to life, and distance within a family into view.

A monkey appears above Sakutsugu's head, beginning an unusual coexistence amid his ordinary old age.

Pan no Naru Umi, Hi no Mau Sora is a love story in which Maya, a lyricist who loves steel drums, and Gregory, a subway conductor, grow close by phone and arrange to meet in Trinidad and Tobago.

Beginning with a personal ad in New York, the pair's relationship leads toward the homeland of the steel drum.

Catch Me at Ororo Field is a humorous novel in which Ushiana Village, a remote community suffering from extreme depopulation, joins forces with an advertising agency on the verge of bankruptcy to revive the village.

A desperate village-revitalization campaign by an unlikely and underpowered team.

Uenkamuy no Tsume follows Yoshimoto, a wildlife photographer attacked by a brown bear in Hokkaido, who encounters a mysterious woman able to command bears.

After a bear attacks him, a photographer confronts the force of nature through an encounter with a woman who can command bears.

Set in late-Bakumatsu Kyoto, this historical novel foregrounds the violence and energy of outlaws such as Okada Izo. Its bloodstained conflicts give the characters a forceful presence, and the book carries the sharpness expected of a Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award winner.

In a Kyoto stained by violence, youthful intensity breaks loose.

A work in which the protagonist, shaped by the absence of a father, revisits the figure of “Barber” in childhood memory and reconsiders family ties.

A story of twisted yet pure family bonds that follows love and healing from long ago.

A campus novel set in an English department, portraying students’ friendships, romances, and self-discovery.

In a university English department, the students’ relationships slowly shift.

Set in Asakusa’s toy district, this debut follows a trade magazine reporter who grows little by little through the people she meets.

A reporter slowly changes as love and work begin to intersect.

A Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award winner that vividly depicts love and miscommunication among women working in a lesbian bar.

Within fragile relationships, only the shape of love is tested again and again.

A historical romance and Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award winner that follows a samurai who crosses the sea in search of adventure.

A man fascinated by battle races across seventeenth-century Europe.

A representative work that delicately portrays love and growing up through young women at its center.

It delicately sketches the shapes of love and growth.

Sunadokei is a novel by Yu Yoshitomi about a woman who feels unable to commit fully to either her work or her love life. A letter from the man who eloped with her mother prompts her to reexamine her wounded feelings and relationships.

A letter from the man who eloped with the protagonist's mother begins to set her stalled time in motion.

A provocative novel that anticipates a future shaped by nuclear disaster and asks what the figure of “Maria’s father” really means.

A story about nuclear power and family that feels startlingly current despite being written decades ago.

A historical novel set in late-Tang Liangzhou, following the fate of the young governor Shang Can.

A young official sent to a distant frontier is swept along by the currents of history.

A prize-winning novel about a shimmering silk-like material and the fear and obsession surrounding biotechnology. Its vivid imagery asks where the boundary lies between technology and life.

A rainbow sheen over silk quietly distorts Hasu’s vision and desire.

Asako is a 19-year-old rock singer. Love, music, and the texture of a precarious life overlap, giving the work the vividness expected of a 2nd Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award winner.

Asako makes an urgent and vivid debut as a rock singer.

A wildly imaginative story in which chindon performers fill the streets of Ginza. Its festive energy and urban bustle define this winner of the Shosetsu Subaru Newcomer Award.

A festive story in which chindon performers fill Ginza.

The Voice of the River is a crime novel about a young man who returns to his hometown from Tokyo because of family circumstances and plans a bank robbery with a former classmate.

For a young man returning to his hometown, a perilous plan for a bank robbery begins to take shape.

Kochira Gnome follows a demoted supercomputer design engineer who is drawn into international espionage after being approached by a mysterious headhunter.

A headhunter's arrival turns a computer engineer's everyday life toward the world of espionage.