Today, we’re talking about the I-Novel—the highest form of literature in Japan in the 1910s and 20s.

It’s a genre one American scholar describes as “perhaps the most striking feature of modern Japanese literature.”

And it’s a genre Haruki Murakami claims to have an allergy to.

We’ll also be looking at the life and work of Osamu Dazai and asking, “What does it take to get disqualified as a human being?”

cw: addiction, suicide, rape, misogyny

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Buy No Longer Human (translated by Donald Keene) from Bookshop to support RJL. (RJL now recommends Juliet Winters Carpenter's translation of No Longer Human, which debuted after this episode was released.)

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

The father of the Japanese short story Ryunosuke Akutagawa shares his dark vision about what it means to be an artist.

We’re taking a look at Japan in the 1910s and 1920s, the era of the Taisho Democracy and the heyday of Japan’s literary magazines and serial novels.

cw: addiction, suicide, and sexual assault.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Buy on Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories on Bookshop to support RJL.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

Last episode, we talked about the coming of the West and the way it impacted Japanese literature.

This time we’re talking about women as they take up a prominent position in the story of Japanese literature for the first time in almost 1000 years.

Special focus on Ichiyo Higuchi and her best-beloved story "Takekurabe".

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Buy the collection of Ichiyo Higuchi's stories In the Shade of the Spring Leaves on Bookshop to support RJL.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

In this episode, we’re looking at the Meiji Era of Japanese history and its literature.

• The shogunate is replaced.
• Japan looks outward to the West and inward toward itself.
• And a man named Natsume Soseki chronicles it all from the perspective of a stray cat.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Buy on I Am a Cat on Bookshop to support RJL.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

In this episode, we’ll be talking about Ueda Akinari and his Tales of Moonlight and Rain, some of the most influential Japanese ghost stories ever written.

A raging intellectual debate.

A supernatural party game.

And a friend just dying to keep his promises.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Buy your copy of Tales of Moonlight and Rain from Bookshop to help support the podcast.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

How does “this fleeting world” transform from a Buddhist precept to a name for the red-light district?

What did reading look like in early Modern Japan?

And how many dildos does a man need to pack for a trip to the Island of Women?

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Support this podcast by buying the anthology Early Modern Japanese Literature (ed. Hauro Shirane) from Bookshop.org.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

Enjoy the story of a vengeful would-be lover who turns into a 40-foot snake, a sharp-witted woman with criticisms of her husband’s equipment, and a curmudgeonly Buddhist priest who learns to love poetry. In this episode, we’re talking about setsuwa—medieval Japanese anecdotes. Many of them originate as Buddhist preaching, so we’ll also take a look at “Kamakura Buddhisms”: Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren. 

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

We're talking about two central genres of medieval Japanese literature—the warrior ballad and Noh drama. We’ll see two characters from The Tale of the Heike again, including the valiant female warrior Tomoe. This time, she's a mournful ghost.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

The great samurai epic and the rise of the samurai class.

Buy your copy of The Tale of the Heike on Bookshop to support the podcast.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature. 

The world's oldest novel. A hero who is a paragon of beauty with an extreme Oedipus complex.

(CW: sex, rape, incest, pedophilia.)

Buy Royall Tyler's full translation of The Tale of Genji on Bookshop to support the podcast.

Transcript, notes and sources at the podcast episode website.

Let RJL know what you think! (Contact us through the website if you want a response.)

Get in touch at www.readjapaneseliterature.com.
Support RJL on Patreon.com.
Buy your books from Bookshop.org.
All content © 2026 Read Japanese Literature.