Cooler nights and longer evenings make autumn an easy season to fall back into reading. This year’s batch of Japanese books in English is a good place to start.
The five titles below land between September and November 2026. They range from a darkly funny love story to a short memoir. Three of them run under 150 pages, so they fit neatly into a quiet weekend.
Love at Least by Yukiko Motoya
Translated by Kamil Spychalsk, publication date September 8, 2026
Yasuko is 25 and has lived with her boyfriend, Tsunaki, for three years. Depression and hypersomnia keep her in bed for days at a time. When Tsunaki starts working longer hours, she tries to pull her life together. An attempt at dinner ends in tears. A part-time restaurant job helps for a while, until the staff’s warmth starts to feel like too much. Soft Skull pitches the 112-page novel as a 21st-century Japanese take on Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar.” Motoya first released it in Japan in 2006, and a film adaptation followed in 2018. English readers may know her from “The Lonesome Bodybuilder,” her 2018 story collection. Motoya also won the Akutagawa Prize in 2016 for her work “Irui Kon’in Tan” (also translated as “Tales of Marriage to a Different Sort”).
Beautiful Distance by Nao-Cola Yamazaki
Translated by Charlotte Goff, publication date September 29, 2026
A man sits in a cafe with a green juice. He watches a cat, a butterfly and falling cherry blossoms. Then he heads to the hospital, where his wife is dying of cancer. Yamazaki’s short novel follows the couple through the last stretch of her life. It treats small moments, like a sandwich at lunch, as things worth holding on to. Originally published in Japan in 2016, the novel won the Shimase Award for Romance Literature and sold around 21,000 copies. The English edition features a foreword by Booker Prize finalist Katie Kitamura. Booker finalist Katie Kitamura wrote the foreword to the English edition. Yamazaki, a multiple-time Akutagawa Prize nominee, has a second novella arriving in English alongside it: “Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives,” translated by Polly Barton.
A Serving of Hope by Hisashi Kashiwai
Translated by Jesse Kirkwood, publication date October 6, 2026
The Kamogawa Food Detectives return for a fourth helping. Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi run a small diner down a side street near Kyoto’s Higashi Honganji Temple. Customers come to them with a dish they only half remember. The pair track down the recipe and cook it again. This round includes miso soup eaten before a big exam, onigiri (rice balls) given with a promise and ginger pork tied to an old crush. The series belongs to iyashikei (healing fiction), a genre built on warmth and small comforts. The series can be enjoyed out of order, making this a welcoming entry point for new readers. UK readers can pick up Pan Macmillan’s edition a few days earlier, on October 1.
Abandoning a Cat by Haruki Murakami
Translated by Philip Gabriel, publication date October 20, 2026
Murakami rarely writes about his own family, and this short memoir is the exception. It grows out of an essay he wrote for The New Yorker in 2019. The subject is his father, the son of a Buddhist priest, who wrote haiku and later became a teacher. A clerical error sent him to fight in World War II. Father and son drifted apart and stayed estranged for about 20 years, reconciling only near the end. A cat, as the title suggests, has a part to play too. 80-page work, it pairs well with “Novelist as a Vocation,” the Murakami nonfiction book that reached English readers in 2022.
The Horse and I by Genki Kawamura
Translated by Chikako Kobayashi, publication date November 17, 2026
Kawamura made his name with the bestseller “If Cats Disappeared from the World.” He also produced the anime hit Your Name. His new novel takes a darker turn. Yuko Setoguchi is a lonely clerk at a shipyard. One morning, a former racehorse named Strada blocks the highway on her commute. She follows him to a struggling riding club and forms a bond that needs no words. Keeping Strada costs money, though. Yuko starts quietly borrowing from the shipyard union’s funds, and the total soon tops ¥100 million. Translated by Chikako Kobayashi, the novel is Kawamura’s latest work to appear in English.
FAQ
Which translated Japanese books come out in autumn 2026?
Highlights include “Love at Least” by Yukiko Motoya (September 8), “Beautiful Distance” by Nao-Cola Yamazaki (September 29), “A Serving of Hope” by Hisashi Kashiwai (October 6), “Abandoning a Cat” by Haruki Murakami (October 20) and “The Horse and I” by Genki Kawamura (November 17).
Does Haruki Murakami have a new book in English in 2026?
Yes. “Abandoning a Cat,” a short memoir about his father translated by Philip Gabriel, comes out from Knopf on October 20, 2026.
Which of these books suits a first-time reader of Japanese fiction?
“A Serving of Hope” is the gentlest entry point. Each chapter works as a standalone story, so readers don’t need the earlier books in the series.
Are these release dates the same in the UK?
Not always. “A Serving of Hope” comes out in the UK on October 1, and “Beautiful Distance” already reached UK shelves in April 2026.
This article was originally published on September 1, 2022, but has been updated on October 14, 2026, for accuracy.
Looking for more Japanese fiction to plan ahead with? Take a look at our list of 10 must-read Japanese novels set for release in 2026.